The Tactician's Engagement
by Migratory Housefly
Summary: Set during the two-year timeskip in Awakening. Already harried after assuming the responsibilities of his late-sister the Exalt, Chrom faces another potential political fiasco when his tactician announces his intention to marry a potentially controversial figure.
1. Chapter 1

The sun had set a good deal of hours ago, and even the lanterns were starting to burn a bit dim, but Chrom still found himself sitting behind a desk, pouring over treaties and hearing the word of his advisers. Every time he made a motion to go and do something, anything that didn't involve sitting in a barren room reading dispatches, somebody would run up with a new issue that needed his opinion right now, Exalt's crown or not. As it turned out, there were very few worse times to assume power than immediately after a major war.

He wondered how his sister had ever coped with all of these responsibilities- just three months of them and he was ready to invade Plegia again just to get an excuse to get out of the palace. But he couldn't, of course. Even entertaining the thought was betraying her memory; without her sacrifice he would probably have still been fighting the first war. He didn't miss the fear and pain that came with fighting one bit, though he did miss constantly being around the other Shepherds. One of the few pleasures he had had in these last few weeks was when Robin dropped by to regale him with stories about the various mishaps that had been going on while he was sealed in a prison of paper.

Right as his thoughts drifted to his tactician, the door opened to reveal the man himself, his frame bulked by the massive coat that he persisted in wearing despite the stuffy heat of the palace. For a moment Chrom thought he was limping, but then he realized that he was awkwardly trying to keep step with somebody who was clutching him tightly from behind, their arms wrapped around his midsection.

"Hello, Robin. I'm sorry I haven't met with you today." Robin stumbled from the door to his desk, and Chrom rose from his seat to get a better look at him. "Is there something wrong?"

"No, I'm perfectly fine," Robin said, coming to a halt in front of his desk. "There's just something I thought you would need to know."

"What would that be?" Chrom said, remaining standing, knowing that the news Robin brought was usually of the sort that involved swords and deadly new spells. The pair of slender arms clutching across his torso also slightly unnerved him.

"Well, seeing as you're our commander, and my friend, I thought you would like to know that Tharja and I have decided to get married," Robin said. As he finished the sentence a muffled giggle emerged from the space behind his back, and Chrom realized who the arms belonged to. The woman was probably psychotic with joy right now; it was surprising that she was even letting Robin walk. Robin didn't exactly seem displeased himself, the second the words left his mouth a sort of dopey grin crossed his face and stayed there for quite a while.

"Oh. Well congratulations, sincerely," Chrom said, sitting back down. "It's nice to have some news delivered to me that isn't about a new refugee camp that needs food. " And besides, as sudden as the news was, it was good to see that Robin actually had interests that lay outside maps and old military texts. Even if his choice of a mate did unnerve him a little.

"We aren't going to have the wedding immediately, of course. Apart from it being sudden we don't want to be overshadowed by the spectacle of the royal wedding." Robin said.

Chrom slapped his head. "You know, if you hadn't mentioned that, I might have forgotten I have a future wife who's probably going to kill me the second I get out of this office five hours late."

"Sumia's fine, Chrom. Last I saw her she was more concerned about how she was going to ruin the royal family than how much time you spend working." Robin shrugged as well as Tharja's arms permitted. "Anyway, with your permission, we'd like to hold the wedding in the great hall of the palace."

"Of course. You're my tactician, you get the wedding a royal tactician deserves." Chrom said.

"Nothing too extravagant, Chrom. We don't want anything like a parade of trained wyverns escorting us to the altar." A muffled voice from behind him replied, "Maybe just a few."

"Well, anything you want within reason will be granted. With the obscene expenditures we've been stacking up for the royal wedding I don't think I could rightfully deny you the same privilege. Besides, it's the least I could do for the man who won us the war with Plegia," Chrom said.

"That's the other thing we wanted to talk with you about, actually." Robin said. "Tharja's family."

Chrom wondered what he was talking about for a moment before he realized what Robin was talking about. Tharja had defected from the Plegians to join with the Shepherds a few months before the end of the war, right before Emmeryn had made her sacrifice. Right after joining she had developed an obsessive interest in Robin that she made little effort in concealing, and her desire to remain in his vicinity had made any question of her returning to her homeland moot. One of the many documents Chrom had handled in these last few months was a fast-tracked application for her citizenship in Ylisse, which he was slightly relieved to see was not a prospect doomed to anger, one-sided betrayal, and liberal distribution of curses.

Still, Tharja's own view on her nationality did not change the fact that her family, by reputation a powerful clan of dark mages, was still with Plegia. That raised a number of potentially uncomfortable issues. What if her family was actually fanatically loyal to the country and resented their daughter's defection? What if the wedding came across as just another insult to the defeated nation? What if her parents refused to grant Robin their daughter's hand? Tharja would ignore their wishes, without a doubt, but it would nonetheless ever widen the cavernous rift that had grown between the two nations.

"That could be a problem," Chrom said after a moment of thought. "We aren't exactly in the Plegians' best graces right now, and things would only get worse with a cabal of dark mages in the camp against us."

"I also don't like how easily this could be turned into a propaganda story against us. I'll admit that it wouldn't look entirely right from an outside perspective, invading their land and stealing their women and all," Robin said.

With an indignant grunt and the faint sound of flesh peeling off of cloth, Tharja loosened her grip on Robin's back. "You didn't steal me. I came on my own. In fact, if I hadn't been able to come, I would have stolen you. I have plenty of curses that would make it easy."

"You know your family better than we do, Tharja. Is this wedding going to turn into the excuse for our next international incident?" Chrom said.

Tharja shrugged, which was accomplished by maneuvering her arms up and down Robin's torso. "I really don't know if the entire family would go along with it. I'm reasonably sure that Mother would be sympathetic, and everybody's opinions tend to swing her way, but the majority opinion has gone against her in the past." She laughed with contempt. "Usually when there was money or status involved. They aren't nationalists by any stretch of the imagination, but when their daughter is offered a spot in the King's Royal Guard they start waving the banner like everybody else."

"So your defection didn't make you popular with your family?" Chrom asked.

"I got lucky. The late Exalt's sacrifice made the Mad King and people associated with him very unpopular overnight. My family was trumpeting the fact that I had seen through his mechanizations and left before I was even out of sight of the capital. Of course they kept quieter about the fact that I had gone with the invading army, so they still might see wedding the commander that defeated them as going too far, " Tharja said.

Chrom leaned back. This was going to cause him a lot of headaches. In retrospect he almost wished Robin had stayed with the maps and old military textbooks. "Do you think matters will go over easier if we just make it a small, private ceremony?"

"There are only two ways to make a dark mage your enemy for life: kill one of their loved ones, and don't invite them to a relative's wedding," Tharja said, her voice completely serious. Robin added, "And if we hold the wedding in secret that would just make it seem worse when they do find out."

Chrom sighed and stood up again, and walked over to the window that provided his only source of natural light during the day. Right now it still provided some ambient light, with a full sky of stars on display. He stared at them for a while, wondering if any of them had ever had to worry about something so base as diplomacy.

All at once, a resolve came over him. He turned around. "All right. You'll have your wedding. We'll hold it a few months after the royal wedding, so it's viewed clearly as its own distinct event. Tharja, you can tell your family to come and bring as many guests as they want, or if you like I can send my most valued and tactful messengers to break the news for you. But that's not all."

"I'm going to invite Plegian vassals, important merchants, diplomats, whoever seems popular with the new government. At the same time I'm going to have my own people in the court running around making sure all of them are as comfortable and happy as possible. We'll use the wedding as an excuse to broker new treaties and trade agreements on favorable terms for the Plegians. Nobody will be able to say that the wedding was an insult to their nation when we practically invite the entire populace, and none of them will speak ill of the event if they see the potential to garner money or favor. We won't just make it through this without offending Plegia, we'll use it as an opportunity to make them our trusted allies. And if your family is as status-hungry as you say, they won't dream of raising an objection." Chrom walked back over to his desk. Suddenly his own wedding seemed like a minor issue. His head was buzzing with the names of various advisors who could help him set up this new spectacle. This was the sort of thing Emmeryn would have done- not just sit in an office reviewing policies set up by other people, but take a proactive role in making things better.

He looked back up at Robin, who looked slightly perturbed at his sudden burst of enthusiasm. "Assuming you're both okay with the idea, that is," Chrom said.

"Will there be enough time in the day for us to get married?" Tharja asked drily.

"Of course. Your word will be final," Chrom said sheepishly. He was slightly hesitant to say that sort of thing to Tharja of all people, but he still meant it.

"Then it sounds perfect. Thanks for all the thought, Chrom," Robin said. He and Tharja said their good-nights, and frog-marched out of the room as awkwardly as they had come in.

Chrom watched them go, and looked back down at the paperwork that now seemed even less interesting to him. A final thought crossed his mind, and he turned down all the lanterns before leaving the room for good. Most of the work he had left could be done whenever. Starting work on the new wedding could wait until tomorrow. Until then, he needed to get away from this room while he was still in a good mood.


	2. Chapter 2

**Updated 10/26/14- Revised a small continuity error, thanks to DeNile0 for pointing it out**

* * *

Chrom wasn't quite sure just how many rooms there were in the royal palace, which was probably a good sign that the answer was "far too many". It had expanded and contracted over several generations of rulers and had eventually descended into the sort of architectural chaos that is only seen in a building that has housed a succession of people who were powerful and bored at the same time. Chrom could find his way around with relative ease, but knew that newcomers typically didn't fare so well. There was a legend among the servant staff about a chambermaid who had gone to retrieve a fresh set of linens from the laundry and never returned, still searching into the present day.

Robin at least didn't seem to have found that sort of trouble. He had been granted a small set of chambers in the residential wing of the palace, which he had summarily become the building's unofficial second library. It was fairly easy to find him even without looking, since there was almost always a cart full of books lingering by the side of the door. True to form, this was the case today as well- as Chrom glanced by, he noticed that Robin had apparently exhausted the palace's supply of strategy textbooks, since he had moved into military fiction instead.

Unsurprisingly, there were also a few books on dark magic. Tharja had moved into Robin's quarters almost immediately after they had formally announced their engagement. This had caused quite a storm of gossip among the various ladies of the court, which abruptly ended when all of them suddenly came down with mysterious nosebleeds. The dark magic texts didn't look like they had seen much wear- apparently Tharja already knew anything any Ylissean library could teach her.

Chrom rapped on the door, and Robin answered the door quickly, a book in his hand with his thumb still on the page he was reading. Chrom didn't see her, but common sense told him Tharja was probably lurking by him somewhere. She hadn't moved more than ten feet away from him since they had agreed to married, which raised certain logistical problems that Chrom preferred not to think about.

"Afternoon, Chrom. Finish work early today?" Robin asked.

"Not in my wildest dreams. But we've just received Tharja's family's reply to our message, and I thought you would like to see it," Chrom said, brandishing an ornate sheet of stationary with so much gold trimming that it probably slowed down the courier. At the mention of her family Tharja emerged from the shadows, looking as close to welcoming as her face could manage.

"What does it say?" she asked.

Chrom unfolded the letter and began to read aloud. "'Exalted Royal Family of Ylisse- we have received your proposal that your tactician wed a member of our family, the as-of-yet unwed Tharja, a dark mage formerly in the service of the late King Gangrel and currently in the service of your army known as "the Shepherds". We have reviewed the terms of the marriage that you have set, along with the tentative list of guests that you have provided.'

"'On the assumption that the terms given to us in our letter are accurate to the intentions of the royal family and the groom, we are willing to agree to the marriage on terms as they now stand, and will attend without objection.'" Robin broke out in a smile, and Tharja clutched his arm happily. Chrom held up a hand. "Hold up. It's not done yet."

"'To ensure that the preparations for the ceremony are in accordance with the terms outlined in your message, a representative of the family will arrive shortly after this message is delivered. He will be identified as Ortho of Plegia, and will be expecting accommodations according to his needs. We congratulate our daughter and her new husband, and will attend the ceremony to provide our blessing.'" Chrom put down the letter. "So what you make of that?" he asked.

"What do they mean, a representative of the family?" Robin replied.

"They mean Uncle Ortho is going to show up at the front gates soon and start sticking his nose wherever he can fit it," Tharja said. "He's also showing up months before our wedding- inconvenient for that, but conveniently just in time for him to be present at the royal wedding."

"So you think your family is being deceitful?" Chrom asked.

"I don't think they're being deceitful. The letter lays it out in pretty simple terms that they're planning to exploit this as much as they can. They wouldn't be my family if they didn't at least try."

'Do you think this Ortho character is going to raise any trouble?" Chrom asked.

Tharja shrugged. "Give him a bed somewhere and tell the staff not to worry when he starts harassing them. He'll be too worried about keeping the image of the family up to do anything extreme."

"Alright then," Chrom said, handing the letter to Robin. "Then the only thing we have to worry about is how the rest of the Plegians react. The guest list we've set up is pretty extensive, but that won't help us much if their government announces their intention to execute anybody who attends."

"Call me overly optimistic, but I don't think the government will raise that much of a fuss. I don't know much about Plegian politics, they're probably still in the phase where they're aggressively trying to prove that they're not as bad as Gangrel," Robin said. Tharja smirked.

"You _don't _know much about Plegian politics," she said.

* * *

Despite Tharja's cynicism, no such crisis occurred. The list of diplomats, merchants, and other prominent Plegian figures who agreed to attend the wedding increased rapidly, with new messages arriving every day. A few guests arrived in person, seeing as how they had been invited to both Robin's wedding and Chrom's, which was now beginning to seem frightfully close.

The only notable absence among the replies was that of any prominent members of the Grimleal, the state-sponsored religion of Plegia. No objection had been raised by them, or indeed any response at all. Chrom considered trying to contact them again, but the number of people who remained silent suggested that this was a calculated move. At the very least they weren't actively campaigning against the event.

Aside from that, there was only one significant hiccup in the initial preparations for the celebration, and surprisingly it didn't emerge from the Plegian side of affairs. Chrom was taking a shortcut through the main building of the palace, on his morning walk between his bedchambers and his office. To his surprise, he came across Robin and a noble Chrom didn't quite recognize having a conversation in the hallway- the surprising part not being their presence, but that Tharja was nowhere to be seen. They were fairly engrossed in their discussion, and so Chrom quietly sidled forward to see what the subject of debate was.

The noble was one of those who Chrom knew by face, but not any further than that. He was a stout, middle-aged man with short grey hair and a prominent set of ears. Additionally he seemed to be the sort of person who took his status in his country very seriously, to the point where he wore a blazer emblazoned with the Mark of Naga. He was speaking to Robin with very animated expressions, gesticulating wildly in all directions, while Robin didn't seem to be displaying any emotion at all.

Chrom got within hearing range just soon enough to hear the man's parting words, which were, strangely enough, "Fine! But I shall be discussing your disloyalty with the future Exalt- it so happens that he is a close compatriot of my own." He stormed off, bumping directly into Chrom in the process. The ensuing babble of apologies kept the man from regaining his composure before he was out of sight, and Chrom suspected for some time after as well.

Chrom marveled at the sight for a moment, before turning back to Robin, who had been engrossed in the sight as much as he was.

Robin nodded. "Hello, Chrom," he said loudly. "I don't suppose you're going to tell me that Tharja's going to betray us too, are you?"

Chrom was taken aback. "No, I wasn't," he said. He was about to ask why Robin had said his name so loudly when a door next to him opened abruptly, revealing Tharja. She looked at him with a blank expression.

"I don't suppose that I heard that conversation horribly out of context, did I?" Chrom asked carefully.

"Did you hear the part where he said I was a Plegian spy sent to destroy us from the inside? And that we were going to use the wedding to sign over our military to the Plegians?" Tharja asked, her tone neutral.

"No, but I can see where he might have brought that up," said Chrom, trying to match her lack of expression.

"Then you caught the basic gist of it," Tharja said. She walked back over to Robin, and looked at him carefully.

"Do you think I'm a spy?" she asked, staring closely at his face.

"No. And besides, anybody who looks at a mysterious amnesiac with an unusual talent for war and uses his wife as a basis for deciding he could be trouble clearly doesn't have his priorities in order," Robin said. Tharja's face broke into a grin, and she kissed him. Chrom stood awkwardly by until they finished.

"Has anybody else said anything like that? Things could get bad if half of people here are thinking like that and he was the only one brave enough to say it to our faces," Chrom said.

Robin shrugged. "I don't know. Truth be told, I don't get out much. I only really know what the Shepherds think, and most of them are fine with Tharja. Frederick didn't seem too happy, but then again he never is. Nobody has said anything to make me worried."

"Well I am. Even if that man was completely alone in his opinion, his status ensures that other people are going to listen to him. I can't tell him what to think, at least not without following Gangrel's path as a leader, but I still don't want anybody wandering around saying that my most trusted adviser is betraying us," Chrom said

Robin smiled. "Oh, I'm not sure. I can see where somebody might be suspicious about me. No personal history, assumes a position of great power, and now marries a foreigner who hasn't gotten into a lot of people's good graces, all while using the wedding as a means to appeal to the Plegians. Frankly it's a wonder I haven't usurped you yet." He laughed, while Chrom just sighed, thinking that a good usurping would probably take a lot of stress off of his mind.

"Is there anything you can do? Pompous old men aren't known for the flexibility of their opinions, even less so when they've got authority. I know some curses that could put him in a better frame of mind about me, but it would probably make the court look bad to have one of its members lying motionless and seeing pretty colors," Tharja said, bringing the conversation back to subject material she was familiar with.

"Well, I know standing in this hallway talking about it isn't going to help us. I'm not going to change anything about the plan for your wedding, but if you see any opportunity to improve your opinion in the eyes of the nobles, I suggest you take it." Chrom started pacing. Robin and Tharja meanwhile stayed motionless, tracking him with their eyes. "We might arrange some sort of military exercise as entertainment one of these evenings; people who've never held a sword love that sort of thing from a distance. And my wedding is coming up in just a few weeks- if there's ever a time and place for mingling, it'll be that."

"Chrom," Robin said, stopping him in his tracks. He looked up.

"What?" Chrom said.

"Relax," Robin replied. "You worry too much. One indignant noble can only do so much damage, and you've got enough problems without trying to spread propaganda about how I'm so great. Focus on trying to fix the problems that actually matter, and then try to focus on small things like me."

Chrom sighed. His shoulders dropped what felt like five feet. "I suppose you're right. Just try and keep from angering anybody who acts like they're more important than they actually are," he said, trying to clear his head.

"I'll tell Virion you said hello," Robin said.

He and Tharja said their goodbyes and wandered off to parts unknown. Chrom, left alone in the passage, thought again but with much more intensity that life was getting too complex. He considered just giving up on work and spending the rest of the day trying to keep himself from going insane, but decided against it. The last thing his country needed was more leaders who thought they were the only sane ones.


	3. Chapter 3

The work didn't ever end, Chrom was sure of that now. Every time he issued a decree that seemed sure to resolve some problem once and for all, it would just come back to him a few weeks later with the assurance that it was singlehandedly responsible for the creation of a new, bigger problem. Even so, he had managed to devise ways to make sure that his own personal workload was trimmed to a reasonable size, by filtering everything that wasn't of immediate importance through a dense layer of subordinates. Delegating wasn't a talent that came naturally to him, as he constantly felt like he was avoiding responsibility by not making decisions himself, but he managed to justify it to himself anyway- the more rational reason being that it let him focus more effectively on high-priority decisions, but his personal one being that his wedding was coming up fast and he thought his marriage would suffer if he couldn't find time to attend it.

The practical upshot of his new managerial approach was that he had managed to secure a decent amount of free time to see his friends and regularly continue his training, whereas before he had been limited to a few sporadic exercises initiated by Frederick, who had taken it upon himself to spring from around corners demanding that he do jumping jacks to ensure that his official duties did not interfere with his fitness. Chrom appreciated his enthusiasm, but still preferred taking his exercise on a regular schedule- even if he was constantly worrying about how his advisers were making decisions for him, at least he was doing something productive in the meantime.

Chrom had about two hours he could spare each day on training before the sun went down and the likelihood of Shepherds accidentally maiming each other increased enough for Frederick to close the training grounds. Usually the only people left on the grounds by that point were absolute diehards like Frederick himself and whoever had been preoccupied with other responsibilities earlier in the day.

Robin, and by association Tharja, were some of the proactive ones, which meant that they usually weren't on the grounds by the time Chrom arrived. Today, however, Chrom spotted Robin the moment he walked onto the field- even in the dimming light, the massive purple coat made him a difficult figure to miss. And as expected, Tharja was hovering within her usual radius of him, along with a gaggle of the palace's staff and one figure Chrom didn't recognize.

As Chrom walked over, one of the wooden dummies that the Shepherds used for target practice suddenly burst into flame, presumably stuck with a fire spell. Robin nodded appreciatively, and the person Chrom didn't recognize flipped through a spell tome he was holding, and hit it with second spell, this one traveling from the man's hands to the dummy.

By the time Chrom had closed the distance between them the man had cycled through a half-dozen different fire spells and the dummy had been reduced to a pile of embers lying pathetically in the dirt. Closing the tome he was holding smartly, the man turned away from the target and noticed Chrom for the first time, putting a wide grin on a face that looked far too thin to support it. Robin turned and saw him too, and walked over to greet him.

"Good evening, Chrom. I hope you don't mind that I've been letting a guest onto the Shepherd's grounds," Robin said, projecting his voice a bit.

"Of course not, so long as you've got a reason. Who is he?" Chrom asked.

Robin gestured to the man, who strode towards Chrom with a confident gait. "Chrom, this is Ortho, the representative Tharja's family sent to help prepare for the wedding. Ortho, this is Chrom, my commander."

Ortho knelt politely, and said, "It is an honor to meet the next Exalt, and a much higher honor to be allowed to use his own training grounds."

Chrom patted him on the shoulder, and said, "Come on, stand up, you're welcome here. I don't need you to grovel about burning down some lumps of wood." The wide grin crossed across Ortho's face again, and he rose from the ground with a laugh.

He looked to be around forty years old, but in remarkable health for his age and with a wiry frame of muscle that suggested he didn't live an entirely sedentary lifestyle. Like Tharja, he wore the outfit favored by Plegian dark mages- a cloak, a mesh garment that covered the entire body, and some loose flowing garments covering the vulnerable areas- and also like Tharja, he seemed completely unaware that there was anything strange about it. The only difference between his outfit and that of any of the dark mages Chrom had seen in the Plegian armies was that Ortho lacked the headdress, his strangely narrow head remaining undecorated.

"An honor it remains despite your insistence to the contrary, Exalt. To practice his craft on royal grounds is something the average mage can only dream of," Ortho said. His voice was decidedly average in pitch, but he projected it so forcefully that one didn't have time to notice that. He spoke like a priest enthusiastically conducting a sermon, every word booming forth in reckless disregard for life and limb. "Ah, but I let myself be drawn into empty praise. Your time is surely thin on the ground with the royal wedding awaiting in but a few days. The staff deserves commendation; all the time I've been here they've done nothing but bustle to and fro making preparations."

That almost came to a surprise to Chrom, though on reflection he supposed it was probably true. Chrom hadn't noticed much in the way of unusual behavior from his staff, but that was probably due to the fact that he had spent the last week or so doing nothing but walking in a circuit between his chambers, the Shepherd's dining room, his office, and the training grounds. The entrance hall could have been actively on fire for the past three days and he only would have noticed if the wind had been blowing in the right direction.

As he pondered this another aspect of Ortho's statement came back to bother him. "Just how long ago did you arrive? I would hate to think that I've been unknowingly snubbing a guest."

"Oh, a few hours, nothing more. My niece and your tactician have been escorting me around your castle-" Robin waved his hand and smiled uneasily "-and I of course have been nothing but impressed. We've been discussing the matter of their union. A complicated affair, a marriage across nations, but not so great a feat that I foresee unsurmountable difficulties." Ortho started pacing in a circle, apparently finding a mere standing position insufficient for his vocalizations. "I trust the accommodations will not provide any difficulties? I have been given the impression that you are willing to provide a decently-sized celebration- my niece mentioned something about an escort of wyverns."

Chrom rubbed his ears. "I don't know about that, but we're not going to skimp on the expenses without good reason. We need to show that we've got only good intentions, considering all the Plegian diplomats and merchants that we invited."

Ortho's expression did not even flinch when Chrom mentioned the guest list. "Ah yes, but how do the guests matter in comparison to the well-being of my family, my niece and her beloved." Behind him, Tharja rolled her eyes so hard that Chrom was surprised it wasn't audible. Oblivious, Ortho clapped his hands together and continued, with a definitive tone in his voice.

"Anyway, though I have countless other matters I would wish to discuss with you, I am sure you have more pressing matters to attend to. The road weighs heavily upon me, and so I shall depart to seek food and then rest. Good night, Exalt." He departed, starting the long trek back up to the palace's main building, with the palace staff trotting wearily after him.

"What are those servants doing with him?" Chrom asked.

"I'm not sure. He just kept complimenting them until they started following us," Robin said.

Chrom looked towards Tharja. "Is he always so…" He paused, trying to choose his words diplomatically.

"Yes. He is always so," she replied, more loudly than usual. Chrom wondered for a moment whether she had gotten annoyed at his question before she reached up to her ears and removed several wads of cotton.

"That's the way it's always been," she continued, her speech normal again. "When you're sitting around a table with my family, the only safe options are not to say anything, or to say something so loudly that nobody else can hear themselves think of a counterargument." She smirked, not entirely rueful. "Though I think he's gotten slightly worse lately. Mention Gangrel and he'll launch into a five-minute speech about how he was a disgrace to the nation. We got to hear it three times today."

"He mixed it up a bit the third time around, at least. Compared him to a whole different type of fungus," Robin said sharply. Tharja reached up to his ear and plucked out another cotton ball.

"So you've at least spent a decent amount of time with him. Did he seem like he's here with good intentions?" Chrom asked.

"Uncle Ortho is completely harmless. His intentions should have been clear from the start: he wants to sit at a big table in front of a lot of important people. If there's something that could stand in the way of that goal, like his dignity, he's more than willing to cast it to the wayside," Tharja said. Her hand lingered by Robin's ear, gently tugging at his hair until he patiently reached up and lowered it down.

"If you trust him that much, then I suppose we shouldn't worry too much. Still, him coming this far ahead of the actual date of the wedding seems strange." Chrom said.

"It's far ahead of _our_ wedding," Tharja said. "_Your_ wedding is in a week. You might be trying your best to make sure our wedding gets out of hand, but a royal wedding leaps out of the hand all on its own. It's practically a buffet of new connections to make and true names to learn. Heaven to a person like him." Her hand idly drifted back up to Robin's ear.

Chrom blinked. "You know, even though Sumia and I talk about it every night, it seems like I never actually think about it during the day."

"That's because you spend every daylight hour obsessing over how many wars ours is going to start," Robin said. Chrom laughed.

"I suppose you might be right," he said. "If I don't get a chance to see him myself, tell Ortho that he'll be granted a seat in the ceremony if he wishes. It'll have to be in the back row, probably, but no use snubbing a guest just because he's a bit impudent."

"I'm sure he would jump for joy were he not unpacking his formal clothes as we speak," Tharja said. As if to drive her point home, the sound of Ortho's voice came drifting across the grounds telling a servant to fetch a trunk from his carriage, his speech indistinct but loud as ever.

Chrom said his goodbyes to Robin and Tharja, and they headed up on back into the palace, with Tharja still hanging onto Robin's ear for no readily identifiable reason. Chrom looked up at the setting sun, and decided he probably had another hour or so of daylight to train.

He hefted a practice sword. The phrase "_One week away" _drifted across his mind. He started his warm-up routine, and was suddenly glad for the chance to be alone with his thoughts.


	4. Chapter 4

Chrom wished he wasn't alone with his thoughts. They had locked him in one of the castle's spare rooms a few hours ago, and ever since then he had been doing nothing but let his mind go over and over the seemingly endless list of things that could go wrong today. He couldn't even exercise to distract himself, lest he risk wrinkling his finest set of clothes.

He had no aversions to marrying Sumia, quite the opposite in fact. That was one of the major problems. A simple political marriage could weather any sort of fiasco at the wedding and the only thing he would worry about was if it would affect the ensuing alliance, but since he was marrying somebody he very much loved, even the tiniest drawback would seem like an unprecedented disaster. They had gone through so much together in the war, and now he was spending half his life negotiating with his advisers. The least he felt he could do was provide her with a decent wedding.

Just as he was adding the three hundredth entry to his list of potential disasters, he heard the door unlock and open. He turned around to see Frederick, looking awkward and uncomfortable outside of his massive suit of armor, along with Robin, who was dressed in the closest thing he had to finery. Tharja was presumably showing restraint by remaining outside the room.

"We're going to start the ceremony in about fifteen minutes, milord," Frederick said.

"Frederick! Thank the gods you're here," Chrom said. "Please help convince me that everything won't go horribly, terribly wrong."

Frederick's back stiffened, called into his element. "There's no need to worry, milord. The guests are being seated as we speak with no notable absences. Those of us who are to participate in the ceremony are in position, aside from myself and Robin here, and we will be returning in our due time. In fourteen minutes you will be called forth to the altar. Sumia will shortly thereafter advance down the aisle, which Miriel has assured me is as close to a perfectly flat plane as can exist in our world. The ceremony will then be performed, and the two of you shall present yourself via the front balcony to the awaiting crowd currently surrounding the palace."

Frederick inhaled. "Nothing will go wrong because nothing can go wrong. Robin has meticulously laid out the plans under my diligent instruction, and we have ensured that the only possibility of failure lies in the sudden and spontaneous appearance of an enemy army numbering at least ten thousand men in strength, give or take five hundred."

He tapped Chrom sharply on the shoulder. "And with that, I'm afraid I must depart. I will further brief the others in the royal guard, and we will maneuver you to the ceremony in thirteen minutes. Robin will remain in this room until he takes his position eight minutes hence. Good luck, and congratulations to you and your bride." He turned on his heel and walked back out the door, leaving Robin looking rather nonplussed.

"He doesn't seem to grasp the romantic implications of the event, does he?" he said.

* * *

In the end, nothing did go horribly wrong during the ceremony. He was marched through what felt like several miles of the castle grounds, his escort passing by a crowd of citizens who had turned up to witness the spectacle, corralled effectively by the palace guard. Evidently there was a festival going on in the city- the populace of Ylisse hadn't quite taken to Chrom quite as well as they had to Emmeryn, but being a war hero certainly won him some admiration, and even the vilest royal's marriage would result in a day-long celebration, even if for no other reason than people will take any excuse they can get for frivolity.

Once he got to the palace's chapel, where the actual ceremony was performed, he didn't remember much. Snippets stood out- seeing Sumia come down the aisle, the priest announcing them as man and wife, standing on the balcony to greet a crowd of onlookers- but mostly all he could remember was being very, very happy.

Things began to get more distinct at the celebratory dinner in the great hall. Chrom didn't know just how many people had been invited in the end, but the huge room was bulging at the seams just to accommodate all of the guests. If they had added an extra course to the meal the roof would probably have caved in.

Chrom and Sumia of course sat at the head table, along with Lissa and a few more distant family members. Frederick had been offered a seat at the table as well, and he had attempted declined due to his own crippling humility. Lissa had found his reasoning less than adequate, and her intense badgering eventually wore down his resolve enough that a compromise was reached where he agreed to stand adjacent to the table, but made no promises to look happy.

The rest of the room was mostly Shepherds and lesser nobles, the former the more important in Chrom's eyes, though political factors made it crucially important that the latter never find out. It was sort of odd watching the two groups mingle: almost all of the Shepherds constantly laughed, argued, and generally shoveled food into their mouths as fast as they could, while being observed with quiet but unvoiced disdain by the non-Shepherds and Maribelle. He supposed they could have acted with more decorum, but considering the number of internal marriages that the Shepherds had gone through recently Chrom just counted himself lucky that they still bothered to wear dress clothes.

Robin and Tharja had found some creative solutions to the issue of formal clothes. The Shepherd's tactician was an appointed position rather than an actual military rank, so Robin didn't have anything in the way of an official dress uniform. Instead he had just worn some polished dress armor and adorned his coat with some gold trimmings, which was not the most comfortable-looking approach to high fashion but was at least a sign of a decent attempt. Meanwhile, Tharja was looking a bit more disgruntled in an Ylissean mage's outfit that she had borrowed from one of the other Shepherds, in accordance with a request by some of the staff that she not wear her usual outfit to the wedding. Chrom wasn't sure how she felt about that, but he was pretty sure that the robes hadn't been pitch black when they had been given to her.

The two of them were sitting towards the middle of the room, roughly between the Shepherds and various nobles. Chrom didn't think much of that until he realized why- a few tables away was that man Ortho, sitting with a group of older gentlemen and looking very much like he was the most comfortable person there. Even above the general hubbub in the hall, his booming voice occasionally drifted back up to Chrom with some proclamation of his family's long-standing friendship with the Ylisseans.

His thoughts drifted away from the seating arrangements when Frederick tapped him on his shoulder and told him that it was time to go greet the guests at the tables. It seemed a faintly onerous custom to Chrom, who would have very much preferred having all the guests come up to him, but since half the guests were people he had fought for his life beside and the other half were people that could be appeased by the most blandly diplomatic statements, he supposed it could have been worse.

He and Sumia drifted around the rooming, exchanging polite greetings and high-fives as the case might be. They didn't linger too much with anybody, considering that there was an entire room of people to get to, but Chrom did pause once they got to the table where Robin and Tharja were sitting.

"Congratulations, Chrom. We couldn't be happier for you," Robin said. Tharja murmured an agreement, but she seemed not quite committed to the idea. It was probably just the event, but the more unusual characteristics of her personality seemed to be manifesting more clearly today. Her and Robin's seats were pushed close together, she was holding on tight to his arm, and unless the table setters had made a horrible mistake, she had put all of her food onto his plate.

Chrom turned away from their table after a bit more idle chatter, towards the one where Ortho and his newfound friends were sitting. They were a group of lesser nobles who hadn't brought any guests to the celebration, and most of them looked like they were regretting their decision to leave their wives at home. Ortho was so engrossed in explaining subjects he found them ignorant in that he didn't even notice Chrom and Sumia approach.

"You overestimate my talents, my good friend. I should have no hope in 'taking over your mind' with as little preparation as I have had," he said, smiling widely, any trace of self-awareness absent from his face. "Curse's aren't like daggers, where one thrust is sufficient for all purposes. The more powerful the curse, the more lengthy the preparations. Given what I have available now I could probably manage to place a severe flu upon you at best. Now, if you could provide me with an account of your life story, your true name, and perhaps some incense, I could make some headway-"

"Hello everybody, I'm glad that you could make it," Chrom said loudly, trying to draw attention away from Ortho before the other people sitting at the table felt it necessary to flee.

Ortho turned around with a bright expression. "The good Exalt-in-waiting, and his own new bride! Might I offer my own personal congratulations? I must say that the ceremony was quite wondrous- of course, I haven't seen many of them conducted in the service of of Naga, but-"

"I'm glad you enjoyed it," Chrom said, trying to head him off before he gained any momentum. "It's my personal wish that our people will be able to admire each other's traditions without having to resort to conflict in the future."

Ortho beamed. "Absolutely! There's nothing like a healthy exchange of ideas across cultures. Of course, the rest of the family and many of the other guests are probably going to have to insist that my niece's and your tactician's ceremony be performed with the traditional rites of Grima, but-"

This time it wasn't Chrom who had a chance to interrupt him. One of the nobles slammed his palms against the table and rose from his seat with a furious expression.

"That's quite enough!" he said, looking at Ortho, and then turned to Chrom. "Your majesty, I implore you to reconsider this travesty. I can accept diplomacy. I can accept consorting with the enemy if it means peace. But I will not allow the house of Ylisse that I have supported through such hardships allow its sacred institutions to be besmirched in order to appease those who have already been defeated."

He was speaking quite forcefully, and most of the tables around them were looking towards them curiously. Robin and a few of the other Shepherd's nearest cautiously stood up, putting their hands on any weapons they had nearby. A few of the palace guards were already making their way towards Chrom.

"Sir, please, we can talk this over like grown men," Chrom said, putting up his hands in appeasement.

"Grown men are not so naïve that they think any behavior out of their subordinates can be accepted. Grown men have enough respect for their traditions not to usurp them in their most holy of houses," the noble countered, his finger pointed steadfastly towards Robin. "I will not accept a king who allows his most trusted confidant to betray his god without question. I will not accept a military whose values can be undermined by the solitary endeavor of a foreign harlot."

By this point the palace guards had made their way towards them, and two of them surrounded the still-nameless noble on either side. He glanced their way and dropped his hand.

"In the interest of politeness, I will depart peacefully. But please, heed my words, Exalt. I assure you I am not the only one who feels this way." True to his word, he let the guards escort him to the door without raising a fuss.

The commotion died down soon after, and some of the Shepherd's treated the whole thing like a joke. But Chrom still felt uneasy. Ortho was right after all, most of the Plegian guests would expect a fellow Plegian to have a marriage performed with their traditional rites, and many of the Ylisseans would view exactly that as an insult to the royal house. There wasn't an easy solution this time, and he kept worrying about it on and off for the rest of the day. It was Sumia who finally gave him something close to peace of mind.

"You'll think of something," she said, several nights later while they were laying together in bed. "I wouldn't have married you if I thought there was a disaster you couldn't fix."


	5. Chapter 5

Chrom wasn't panicking about this crisis as much as he had initially expected. By this point he had grown used to the fact that big problems tended to slowly fade out of focus over time instead of dying a single glorious death, and this one was no different. The central problem in this case was an instance of people acting stupid out of stubbornness and pride, and if he thought he could resolve that issue himself he wouldn't be wasting his time in his office.

Early on he had hoped that Ortho's suspicion that his family would insist on a traditional Plegian marriage ceremony for Robin and Tharja was overly pessimistic. The Plegians ostensibly worshipped the "Fell Dragon" Grima, and conducted all of their major religious services in his name, though from what Chrom understood only the Grimleal priests paid more than lip-service to the religion. Either way involving the actual Plegian ceremonies would be cause for anger and suspicion among the Ylisseans, who were having enough doubts about the marriage without them involving prayers to a dragon-god of destruction.

He had decided to go to Tharja for a second opinion on what her family and the other Plegian guests would be expecting, but didn't get a chance to talk to her until a few days after his wedding, during breakfast. Unfortunately, she seemed to think Ortho was on the right track.

"They're definitely going to bring religion into it," she said, chewing on the end of a pastry, barely pausing to think about it.

"You're sure about that?" Chrom asked.

"Yeah, if I know my family," she said, swallowing. "Ever since Gangrel got out of the picture the Grimleal have been hoarding more and more power. They've delayed the announcement of the new king for months now just so they can build up their position in the power vacuum. My family is going to be sucking up to the church so much that their lungs might burst."

"Have they actually said anything to you about the ceremony?" Chrom said.

"No, but they've been adding increasingly dramatic statements about how wonderful the Grimleal are to all of the letters I've been getting. They're probably kicking themselves that they don't have any children young enough to enroll in the Cult," Tharja said. She finished her pastry, and immediately grabbed a second one off of Robin's plate. Robin, who had his nose buried in a book, either didn't notice or didn't care.

"They're not fanatics," she said, mouth full again. "If the church decides that it's time for blood sacrifices they're going to turn into skeptics very quickly. But as long as it's popular, they're going to insist that we involve Grima."

So any easy solution was out of the question. In all likelihood somebody was going to be mad no matter what they did, but that was a reality of office Chrom had gathered fairly quickly. At the very least there was a steady drip of positive solutions coming in over time that would at least mitigate the resulting crisis.

The first was that the ceremony would be held outside, in the palace gardens instead of any chapel. That was actually Vaike's suggestion, presumably based on a misinterpretation of the outspoken noble's complaint against the marriage taking place among "the house of Ylisse". The logic being that it wouldn't be as bad if it wasn't actually inside the house. Still, having the ceremony on neutral religious grounds would probably be the safest bet, and it armed anybody inclined to support the marriage with a firm if annoyingly literal reason why it wasn't harmful to the palace's integrity.

The second was that the priest conducting the ceremony had to be Libra. The Ylisseans couldn't complain because he was a priest of Naga, and the Grimleal couldn't complain because it was only reasonable for a tactician to have his chaplain perform his marriage. The only issue was that the furthest Libra was willing to go was to keep the ceremony completely deity-neutral: he would sooner cut his hair than praise Grima in any capacity.

Robin was the one who came up with the last piece of the puzzle. He walked into Chrom's office one day, Tharja following as surely as wetness follows rain, and dropped a stack of heavy books on Chrom's desk with a shudder. Chrom, who knew better than to question Robin when books were involved, waited to see where he was going with this.

"I had Ortho steer me in the direction of some books on Plegian marriage rites," he said. "In the course of about fifteen minutes he managed to name three books and render me partially deaf, but it was enough to start looking things up."

"What did you find?" Chrom said.

"Well, the basic marriage ceremony in the service of Grima is essentially the same thing we have. Two people go in front of a crowd, they say they love each other, the priest says God is okay with it, and that's it. Most of the differences seem fairly cosmetic," Robin said. "I've known that all for a while though, it doesn't help us."

Chrom was slightly taken aback. "How did you already know?" he said.

"Tharja explained Plegian marriage ceremonies to me a while ago. About a month after we met, while we were still chasing Gangrel."

"Three weeks after we met," Tharja corrected.

"Why were you explaining Plegian marriage ceremonies to him?" Chrom asked, taken further aback.

"I thought he was asleep," Tharja said.

There was a brief silence while Chrom considered this. Eventually he decided that more important issues concerned him. "Well anyway, what else did you come up with? I wouldn't expect you to come to me unless you've already got a solution."

Robin nodded. "There are a couple more minor traditions surrounding the ceremonies. Most of them aren't too widely practiced and thus aren't very useful to us, unless you think it will help the situation to seal the union by placing a curse on a common enemy." Tharja seemed less skeptical of the idea from her expression, but Robin continued uninterrupted. "The main thing I saw that we could use to our advantage is a practice called common rites."

Robin picked up one of the books he had heaved onto Chrom's desk and started leafing through it. "The basic idea is that since the Grimleal have standardized one religion throughout the country, there's only one official marriage ceremony from a religious point of view, which makes ceremonies very simple to plan. But from a legal or social point of view, there can be an armful of dowry or estate-joining issues that can take months or years to resolve in worst-case scenarios. So if a marriage is agreed upon but the other matters aren't, the couple just separately perform their common rites, sign a contract proving they've done so, and once the other matters are settled they officially finalize the wedding without having to take a few extra months to plan a religious ceremony."

Chrom glanced at Tharja. "Is this fairly common?"

"People don't really think about it," Tharja said, shrugging to indicate she was chief among the people she referred to. "My brother was married by common rites a few months before he was actually legally married, they still threw a party. The two people are supposed to go through the rites separately because they aren't going to be actually married, but nobody cared. They walked down the aisle and everything."

"So you think this can help us? I don't want anybody at your ceremony to think that they're only getting to see Part Two," Chrom said.

"Well, like I said, you're technically supposed to do the rites separately," Robin said, studying a particular page more closely. "So if, before the wedding, we go through the common rites with a few key members of our Plegian guests acting as witnesses-"

"Then we just keep the actual ceremony as neutral as possible and you'll have pleased both sides," Chrom said, impressed. "But do you think the word of a few of the Plegians will be enough to spread to all the rest?"

"Why bother? We can just announce it in the ceremony. How many Ylisseans do you know who know what common rites are?" Tharja said. "We had to explain them to _you_ and you're the head of state."

Robin nodded. "We don't have to explain what they are, just mention 'common rites' before the ceremony. All the Ylisseans will just be mildly befuddled, while meanwhile all the Plegians will assume 'Ah, what a devout and politically expedient young couple'."

Chrom leaned back. "Well, I admit it, this does seem like the best solution we're going to get."

"I can name a few that would be better, but most of them involve the assumption that all of the guests will be temporarily struck deaf during the ceremony. I'll take this as a close second-best," Robin said.

"One issue. The Grimleal themselves still haven't acknowledged the wedding in any capacity. How will we get a priest to conduct the rites without tipping that balance?" Chrom said.

"Well, luckily there's a less-visible alternative. Common rites are, of course, common. Which is to say they're seen as so standard you don't necessarily have to be a priest to conduct them," Robin said. He ran his finger along a passage of the book he was holding. "All that's required is that you be granted license by the church, and have the rites performed by 'a member of one of the families, who is a figure of sound mind and in good social standing, fit to deliver the ceremony in a complete and coherent fashion.'"

There was a long, unhealthy silence as all three of them considered the one figure currently on the palace grounds who fit that description. One who would be very displeased if he found out he was intentionally passed over for the role.

Tharja sighed. "I'll tell Uncle Ortho to get his speech-making voice warmed up."

* * *

Barring any unforeseen social gaffes, that seemed to be the last of the issues relating to the upcoming wedding. Really, it had gone a lot easier than Chrom had initially assumed, which is to say that no major wars had started yet. The only thing left was to let the preparations commence and hope nothing unexpected blew up in their face.

A few weeks passed without any major crisis, and before anybody realized it was a week until the wedding. Chrom only barely remembered, but Robin reminded him without having to think. He didn't say anything else, but Chrom imagined a wall of their chambers devoted by Tharja entirely to a raft of calendars, each ticking down the days one by one. A few blasted from existence for daring to show too many days left to wait.

They were out on the training grounds, Chrom having wrapped up any issues for the day that would otherwise spell immediate doom. Chrom was having a duel with Vaike, while Robin and Tharja were busy practicing their spellwork. As he dodged a blow from his foe that could have broken bone, wooden axe or not, Chrom noticed a servant heading down from the palace. He put the duel on hold for a moment, and went to see what the concern was. The staff usually knew not to interrupt him during training unless half of the palace was already destroyed.

"What's the emergency?" Chrom asked the messenger when he reached him.

"Sire, we've received some guests for the tactician's upcoming wedding," the man said, looking more harried than usual.

"So? Put them up in some of the spare bedrooms, gods know that we've got them to spare," Chrom said.

"Well, we would, sire, but there are some, ah, many issues. There are around two dozen of them. Many of them are not wearing what we see as proper clothes. And they're all demanding that they see the tactician as soon as possible. Very insistently. We need to ask if that would be permissible, milord," the man said, drumming his fingers together nervously.

Chrom paused for a second, and was about to ask who they said they were before something clicked in his brain. He turned back around.

"Tharja!" he called.

"What?" came the exasperated reply.

"Your family is here."


	6. Chapter 6

The last person to remodel the entrance hall of the palace had been a monarch who had heard of the general public and decided that he wanted none of it around him. The front doors were technically open to the masses on most occasions, but all the doors leading off the hall were even sturdier than the front ones and were clearly meant to be deadbolted at all times. Perhaps the most baffling of the architectural decisions that had gone into the room was the fact that the only access from the residential wing of the palace led onto a wide balcony, with no access to the bottom floor. For most of his life Chrom had put up with just wandering through the labyrinthine rest of the castle if he wanted to go from his chambers to the front entrance, until Lissa had eventually cracked and just installed a ladder.

However much annoyance it might have caused him in the past, Chrom was momentarily glad for the balcony's existence, as it gave him an advantageous perspective on the occurrences in the room as he ventured in fresh from a change of clothes. Robin and thus Tharja had gone on ahead without bothering to change, reasoning that they had not been exercising hard enough to work up a sweat, and also that two dozen temperamental black mages probably represented a bigger threat than body odor.

Chrom didn't have much trouble locating Robin from the railing of the balcony. He was looking quite harassed in the middle of the room, the center of a crowd of dark-haired heads dressed in dark outfits. Tharja was by his side, her attention diverted by a woman with short-cropped hair. He looked to see if anybody else he knew was in the crowd, and an ear-splitting laugh brought his attention to Ortho, circling the edge of the crowd and canvassing with his family.

Meanwhile, stuck around the edges of room were clumps of the palace's servants. The one who had notified Chrom about their arrival had said vaguely that the new guests had refused to be accommodated until they had met with Robin and Tharja. From the expressions on the staff present it would seem that their rebuffing had been quite intense.

All Chrom knew for sure was that he should focus on making a good first impression with these people. He considered calling attention to himself while standing on the balcony, but ultimately decided against it because that would ultimately also call attention to his rather undignified descent down the ladder. He waited until his feet were firmly on the bottom floor, the attention of the new guests too evenly divided between each other to notice him, arranged himself into a more charismatic pose, and then announced his presence.

"Hello!" he said, raising his voice above the general clamor and feeling slightly foolish.

Conversation immediately died down and a room full of eyes turned and fixed on him. There seemed to be general lack of recognition in their faces, though considering that this was the same stock that bred Tharja he didn't feel confident judging them by their expressions. He strode forward confidently, doing his best to look and sound magnanimous. "My name is Chrom, the prince of Ylisse. I'd like to welcome you all personally to my home."

At the mention of his name the unfamiliar faces all suddenly seemed much more interested in him. As expected, the more socially aggressive ones pushed forward from the crowd, and Chrom spent the next few minutes enduring a series of lengthy introductions and assurances of long-held support for his government.

Most of the family seemed to be poured from the same mold as Tharja and Ortho, with thin frames and pale complexions. Their wardrobe also fit the same general style, mostly consisting of the garb of Plegian dark mages, with a few alterations here and there presumably made for personal style. The fact that these similarities in appearance also extended to those who had entered the family via marriage slightly disturbed him.

A few figures seemed to stick out from the parade of mostly nondescript faces. Tharja's brother, the one who had received a proper wedding party despite being married by common rites, seemed considerably more laid-back than his sister, chatting amiably without any sign of discomfort. Even odder was the meeting with her grandparents, the oldest family members present and thankfully the ones who had the best grip on the concept of modesty, foregoing mesh garments for more traditional robes. Both of them warmly shook Chrom's hand, cheerfully complimented him on the state of the palace, and ambled off before they had overstayed their welcome. Chrom simply did not associate these sorts of people with Tharja. It was like picturing a venomous snake being raised by rabbits.

The final memorable guest didn't arrive until the end of the line. As Chrom finished his small talk with a nondescript cousin, Robin and Tharja walked up to him along with the short-haired woman she had been talking to earlier.

"Chrom, this is my mother. Mother, this is Chrom, my employer," Tharja said, sounding less than enthusiastic.

Her mother smiled. "She says 'employer', like you were a shift supervisor at the docks. I assure you that she was not raised to treat royalty with such contempt." She raised a hand palm downwards, as if expecting him to kiss it. A split second later she apparently thought better of herself and turned it sideways for a handshake. Chrom shook it without comment, and she continued. "You may call me Petra. I'm afraid my husband will be arriving later, he has his business to attend to, you see."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Petra. If there's anything you need don't hesitate to ask," Chrom said, parroting the same stock greeting he had used on everybody in the room thus far. He blinked because he thought his eyes might have been glazing over.

"Wonderful that you should say that. We have been traveling all day, and needless to say we are all very tired and hungry. If you would be kind enough to provide us with a meal, we would be delighted," Petra said.

Chrom had anticipated this and sent word to the kitchen workers that they were going on overtime while he had been walking from the training grounds to his chambers. "Of course, madam. Just talk to the staff and I'm sure that they'll be able to handle any request you give them." Out of the corner of his eye Chrom saw one of the servants involuntarily twitch.

"Oh, I think you misunderstand, your majesty. It would be a great honor to take a meal with the Exalt-in-waiting himself," Petra said. She smiled innocently. Chrom glanced at Tharja, expecting to see her rolling her eyes, but by now she had apparently seen so much of this that she couldn't even bring herself to feel contempt.

"I'm flattered, but I'm afraid we aren't prepared for any sort of royal banquet. I was planning on taking in a simple dinner with some of my soldiers," Chrom said.

"How delightful! Let it never be said that my family thinks themselves above the standards of those who fight for us," Petra said, conveniently omitting the fact that the soldiers in question had fought against her quite recently. "We'll take dinner with you, and I'm afraid we must insist on that."

Apparently unwilling to hear any sort of protest from him, she walked off and very quickly started informing the rest of her family of her plans. If Chrom had planned on declining more forcefully he didn't have much of a chance to do it, since everybody seemed to accept the arrangement without protest. The only sign of discord came when she came to tell Ortho, who flashed the faintest shadow of a grimace before agreeing that it was a fine idea.

"Shall I have the guest's chambers prepared while you eat, sire?" a servant who had stepped up from the wall asked. Chrom rubbed his temples.

"Assuming they aren't planning on sleeping in our beds, go ahead."

* * *

For the first time, Chrom was a bit embarrassed about the state of the room the Shepherds used as a mess hall. It was a plain stone room with bare wooden furnishings, the only decorations being some threadbare tapestries that had been hanging since before Chrom knew how to hold a sword. It was set up plainly and simply so that a large group of people could consume a great amount of food in a small amount of time, and as such very little had gone towards actually making it look presentable.

Fortunately, if any of the guests held any aesthetic objections, none of them let them be known. The food was already on the tables as they walked into the room, and Chrom was momentarily amused to see Frederick widen his eyes in terror at the arrival of a platoon of dark mages before he saw Tharja and Robin and a wave of recollection crashed over him.

Everybody else in the room seemed to take their new friends in stride, and luckily no major incidents occurred. Some of the guests migrated to spare seats around the room, but at least half of them stayed clumped around Robin. Whatever business they had with him back in the hall, it apparently wasn't finished.

There was a great deal of confusion as a dozen people all tried to seat themselves at a long table around Robin, and in the process Chrom sat himself at the table immediately behind it, conveniently next to his wife. He was briefly looking forward to a respite from all the familial chaos when Tharja sat herself beside him, staring daggers into all of the dark forms surrounding Robin.

"What exactly are they doing?" Chrom asked.

"Trying to figure out how much they can bully him," Tharja said, arms crossed across her chest, never diverting her eyes from her fiancé.

"What do you mean?" Chrom said.

"They all live and breathe magic. New member of the family shows up, first thing they do is see how well he can cast a hex. If he's no good at it, they don't have to worry about it and they're free to disregard him. If he's better than them, they all know that it's better to do what he says," Tharja said, still sulking. "In the end it mostly comes down to who's louder, hence Uncle Ortho, because most people don't want to risk getting cursed in retaliation or destroying furniture. But it's still pretty important."

"How important is it?" Chrom asked.

Tharja finally glanced at him. "Let me put it this way. My mother married into the family, and she had no social status to speak of to begin with. She was just a girl who had been overeducated at the academies to them. Then she showed them what she could do with dark magic. Now nobody ever goes against what she says. Officially or not, she runs the family."

Chrom looked back over at Robin's table, where Petra had seated herself almost directly across from the tactician. Despite Tharja's ominous description, she didn't seem to have any ill intent. Regardless, he started listening to what was going on more closely. Somebody who Tharja thought was dangerously skilled with dark magic was certainly worth watching.

Next to Petra, a pencil-nosed cousin whose name Chrom didn't remember was writing in a book and asking Robin questions. Robin, who seemed to be getting quite annoyed at this treatment, was holding his hand in his chin, and if he could see his face Chrom was sure his eyes would have been half-closed.

"Right. What sort of formal education have you had in Anima magic?" the unnamed cousin asked.

"I don't remember," Robin said, voice flat.

"What sort of formal education have you had in light magic?"

"I don't remember."

"What sort of formal education have you had in dark magic?"

"I don't remember."

The cousin looked up from his book. "Find you by the side of the road, did they?"

"Yes."

Shrugging, the cousin continued. "Alright. We've covered most of your practical experiences, which sound solid enough, and if you insist we can skip the portion regarding your formal training." He scribbled through something on the page he was on. "You haven't said much about your practical experiences with dark magic or hexes, though. Can you give us your perspective on those?"

"To tell you the truth, I don't have much experience with either. I've never cast a dark magic spell in combat. Tharja has been teaching me lately, though," Robin said, motionless.

His interviewer clicked his tongue. "Well, being taught isn't quite the same as knowing how. I think your skill with less specialized facets of magic can make up for it."

Ortho, who had sat himself on Petra's other side, chimed in with his usual subtlety. "Oh yes, I can verify that personally. The tactician's skill in elemental magics is really something to be admired. Perhaps he can give us a demonstration on the ranges of the training grounds."

"Sounds wonderful," said Robin flatly.

Petra still seemed skeptical. As the cousin was about to put away his book, she stopped him.

"Give him a Litmal spell," she said. The cousin looked back at her.

"Why? I mean he's got hardly any experience, he said so himself."

"Don't bully the poor man, Petra," Ortho said.

"I'm not doing this without good reason. After all, if he doesn't remember what he's been taught, he might be a genius and not even know it," she said, giving Ortho a hostile look. "Give him the spell."

The cousin sighed, took another book out of his bag, and tore a page out of the back. As he handed it to Robin, Chrom caught a glimpse of a white sheet covered in sigils and markings typical of a page out of a book of magic.

"This is a Litmal spell. It does absolutely nothing except change the color of the page depending on how much power you can put into casting it. We use them to test somebody's innate talent with dark magic," the cousin said. Robin looked the page up and down.

"So you just want me to cast this?" he said.

"Anytime you're ready," the cousin said.

Robin held the page out at arm's length, and took a deep breath. There was a brief audible crackle in the air. Faster than Chrom's eye could follow, the page turned completely black.

A stunned silence hung in the air for a moment. Ortho's mouth hung open slightly. Robin, oblivious from either annoyance or fatigue, just handed the page back to the cousin and asked, "How did I do?"

Regaining his composure after a moment, the cousin said, "I think that one might have been overly sensitive. Would you mind doing another?"

The second result was the same as the first. As was the third, cast with a page from a different section of the book, and the fourth, cast using a page taken out of a completely different version of the spellbook. By the time the cousin was satisfied that nothing was wrong with the test, the table in front of Robin was littered with black sheets of paper. The cousin's hands trembled slightly as he gathered them up, and he thanked Robin for his patience with the test. Robin, simply thankful that the tests were over for now, grabbed a slice of meat from a platter and dug in.

Chrom, not quite sure what he had just seen, glanced back over at Tharja. To his surprise, she had a massive smile on her face, occasionally bringing her hand up to stifle a burst of happy laughter.

"Did something good just happen?" Chrom asked.

Tharja turned, her massive grin still plastered over her face. "They never saw that coming. Mother's been practicing dark magic all her life and it takes her ten seconds to turn one of those spells purple." She turned back again. "I told them he was great, but they didn't believe me until it came in a form they recognized."

"So now they're obviously going to have a bit more respect for him," Chrom said. He felt like he was getting a better understanding of her reaction. Anything that brought the world's opinion of Robin closer to her own was obviously a step in the right direction for her.

Tharja rested her head on her hand. "Respect? Ha. The way they value dark magic, I'd be surprised if they don't start worshipping him as their god."

* * *

An hour later, Chrom made his way out of the mess hall with his wife. Tharja was no longer with him, since she had bolted over to Robin the instant a spot beside him opened up and clung to him like a leech. Robin, who had continued eating quite efficiently under the circumstances, eventually decided to head back up to his chambers when he finished his meal, leaving behind Tharja's family and stumbling off with Tharja.

Chrom had stuck behind for quite some time to entertain the guests, most of whom were quite enamored to share a meal with royalty once the immediate entertainment of Robin's assessment was over. None of them presented any difficulties, since they were entertained by the same blandly diplomatic banter that entertained most of his political guests. The only oddity was that Petra seemed to have left the room early for some reason, but as far as Chrom was concerned that was just a side-benefit.

The rest of the family seemed to have accommodated themselves well enough. As he walked out of the hall, Sumia pointed out Tharja's grandfather having a discussion with Miriel, both of them scribbling wildly on sheets of parchment in attempts to illustrate their points. Across the room, Virion was attempting to smooth-talk one of Tharja's female cousins, and while the conversation seemed relatively friendly at the moment Chrom knew enough about Virion to keep watch for him suddenly coming down with a mysterious flu.

Chrom was actually feeling good about this now. All the major problems seemed to have been accounted for, human problems resolved with human solutions. He felt comfortable going to bed for once, and because of that as he walked out of the mess hall he didn't even notice Petra sitting by the door, absorbed in thought as she stared at a spell page that resolutely remained purple.


	7. Chapter 7

The Plegians mostly kept to themselves after the incident at dinner, fortunately enough. During the week leading up to the wedding he barely saw any of them, although that was to be expected given the scale of the building. The only place he saw most of them regularly was in the front hall of the building, where every hour of the day there was at least one member of the family waiting to greet one of the innumerable guests that had been invited to the wedding. Chrom was pretty sure they were working in shifts.

The one member of Tharja's family who he did see much of was Petra, though even that was mostly incidental meetings. She had apparently taken it upon herself to represent all of her family's decisions in the wedding, and as such Chrom constantly saw her around corridors giving instructions to servants, telling them how they should set up decorations, where to house incoming guests, what rooms they should reserve for meetings, and so on. Chrom didn't begrudge her that privilege , after all, half the reason they had agreed to the wedding was that he had managed to whip it into a diplomatic maelstrom and they desired to make a good impression more than anything. Besides, Tharja's own interest in the wedding only stretched as far as Robin's proximity to the altar.

Robin had apparently been seeing much more of Tharja's family. After the demonstration with the dark magic test they had evidently become much friendlier to him, and while it might have seen like warm acceptance of a new family member to an outside observer, Robin's feelings were a bit mixed, especially after Tharja explained how her family's power hierarchy tended to work.

"Most of them seem polite. Half of them not even maliciously so," he said, giving a status report over breakfast one morning. "A couple of them have offered to tutor me in dark magic. Three of them have offered to make me godfather once they have children."

"Did you accept any of the offers?" asked Chrom.

"I told them that Tharja was teaching me dark magic, and they seemed to take that well enough. The godfather question can wait at least nine months."

"None of them have made you uncomfortable, have they?" Chrom said.

"Not really. 'Pressured' more than uncomfortable. Either one is preferable to them outright hating me," Robin said, waving around a strip of bacon diplomatically. Chrom nodded, and turned back to his own meal. He was halfway through a piece of toast when a thought occurred to him.

"None of them seem outright resentful, do they? It occurs to me that upsetting the balance of power in a family of dark mages might not be the wisest thing to do," he said.

Tharja shrugged, chewing on something she had grabbed off of Robin's plate. "We're going to be in a completely different country from the rest of the family most of the time, and I think most of them understand that a tactician will have bigger concerns than what shade of black to repaint the window shutters. I think they're just buttering him up as a potential ally."

"Ortho did say that your mother has been acting strange," Robin pointed out.

"Of course she's acting strange, she's busy helping plan an international mercantile conference disguised as our wedding. She's not going to bother caring about other people until it's all well and over," Tharja said.

Robin seemed to accept this rebuttal and returned to his meal. Chrom, on the other hand, still had his doubts. He had sunk months of effort into planning this wedding, and if there was any chance of something foreseeably going wrong, he was going to do his best to avoid it. Robin and Frederick had successfully prevented any disasters from occurring at his wedding, and he wanted to repay the favor.

With all this in mind, and knowing that he could seriously regret taking this course of action, he went to go see Ortho.

* * *

Chrom decided to take Sully with him, reasoning that if there was anybody who could negate Ortho's forceful methods of dialogue it was her. They eventually found Ortho relaxing in one of the building's more obscure lounges, surrounded by a cloud of servants who were being bombarded with a constant stream of idle chatter so intensely that none of them seemed sure if they had been dismissed. His defenses were eventually breached when Chrom wandered into his field of vision, causing him to sit up in the comfortable chair he was sitting on and smoothly transition into a polite greeting. Most of the assembled staff took the opportunity to flee the room.

"A pleasure as always to see you, Exalt. Come, sit back, let us discuss things great and small and all in between. Busy men such as ourselves must find time in the day to rest our tired minds, must we?" Ortho said, raising a glass of some mysterious light-green liquid. Sully came into his view a second, and he added without batting an eye, "Women too."

As always half of his speech was devoted to inflating the importance of the other half. But Chrom didn't bother him about it; Ortho was still only moderately long-winded compared to some nobles he had met, and he needed his input anyway. Chrom took a seat facing Ortho, and waved off his offer of a glass of whatever he was drinking. Sully, meanwhile, took the chair next to him and downed the glass in one swig.

"That's great! What is it?" she asked, the only person Chrom had ever met who could rival Ortho in volume.

Ortho smiled. "A fine Plegian rum, provided at the expense of our gracious host, the-"

"Well whatever it is I'm glad we have it," Sully said, pouring herself another glass. "Chrom wanted to ask you something."

Ortho, looking nonplussed, turned his way. Chrom blinked, not expecting to be driven to the topic at hand so suddenly. He cleared his throat.

"Yes, well. I hope you don't mind if I ask a few probing questions about your family, Ortho," Chrom said.

Ortho waved a hand. "So long as they don't violate familial secrets or personal trusts, I will be happy to oblige my host," he said.

"Robin has said that you think Petra has been acting strange, I'm going to talk to her myself after this to see if I notice anything myself, but since I don't really have a frame of reference for what's normal for her, I'd appreciate it if you could explain what you meant," Chrom said.

Ortho tilted his head in recollection , and then nodded. "Ah yes, I remember." He made a dismissive gesture with one hand. 'She's seen the writing on the wall, that's all," he said.

"Come again?" Chrom said.

"Use your words, wizard man," said Sully.

Ortho nodded curtly. "Petra was the strongest dark mage in our family, which gave her one of the strongest voices in our decisions despite being an outsider. Now she sees the cycle about to repeat with your tactician, whether his talent has been fully realized or not. Anybody would be contemplative in that situation," Ortho said, and sniffed sharply. "I doubt she would admit that, of course. My family has many positive qualities; humility is not among them."

Chrom leaned forward. "I'm going to be blunt, Ortho. Do you think she's going to do anything that could disrupt the ceremony? Or anything that could hurt Robin?"

"Certainly not. There would hardly be a point in retaining her position at the head of the family if it ruined the family's standing in the process. There will be many important guests at the ceremony, and any misfortune will reflect poorly on us in their eyes. And she would be the prime suspect if the tactician were to mysteriously perish." Ortho said. He seemed to consider the matter settled with that, and relaxed back in his seat.

"Although," he said after a minute.

"Although?" asked Chrom. Sully looked like she was going to make a more forceful interjection but Ortho cut her off.

"It occurs to me that her goals would all be accomplished were the ceremony to go through as planned, but the marriage be invalid," Ortho said.

"I don't think Libra could perform an invalid ceremony if you held an axe to his head," Sully said. Ortho shook his head.

"I am sure your priest's qualities are amenable. What I worry about is the common rites ceremony. If something were to disrupt that significantly, the rest of the ceremony could go through perfectly well, and after all advantages had been reaped from the celebration she could use that as an excuse for the church to invalidate the marriage," Ortho sipped his glass with a dour expression. "The legal and social ramifications would be complex, to put it simply, but it would doubtlessly delay your tactician's entrance to the family. Perhaps sufficiently for whatever purposes she might have."

"I think we're getting ahead of ourselves. All we know is that she might dislike Robin coming into the family," Chrom said. "I don't want to lock her up because she's got a good reason to do something bad; if I did that, the whole country would be in chains."

"And you would be remiss in such an approach. However, I am not so sure these fears are utterly baseless. After all, your tactician is the one who came to you with his concerns," Ortho said.

He held his glass at eye level and looked through the liquid, before placing it back on the table. "All I recommend is that you keep an eye on her while we perform the common rites ceremony. It will be in during the initial reception, while she will doubtlessly be mingling with the pool of guests, so you need not place yourself in any sort of trouble. Just half an hour of vigilance, and we can continue with the ceremony proper."

"I think we should just chuck her in the dungeon and stop worrying about it," Sully said.

"I cannot recommend that," Ortho said politely.

Chrom stood up. "Well thank you for your time, Ortho, I appreciate your advice," he said, prompting Sully to polish off her glass again and do the same.

"Anytime at all, Exalt. "

As he walked away with Sully, Chrom considered whether he was worrying too much. After all, he was planning on keeping watch on somebody for what seemed like they might be relatively trivial reasons. But then, as he remembered the sight of Miriel going over the wedding aisle with a carpenter's level and protractor, he decided that there was nothing so trivial that it couldn't be a concern at a wedding.


	8. Chapter 8

The incredible resourcefulness of the palace's staff never ceased to surprise Chrom. A scant few months after a royal wedding celebration that had regarded humility and thrift as strange things only practiced in heathen lands, they had managed to pull together a second one that looked just as lavish in scale. To Chrom it seemed even more impressive, though perhaps this was mainly due to the fact that he wasn't spending the entire day leading up to the ceremony sealed in a windowless room.

The castle gardens of course received the bulk of the attention, being the site of the ceremony and also the pre-ceremony party. Guests milled about flowers and hedges that had received more attention in the last few weeks than they probably would in the next few years, while partaking in a "light lunch" that included several roast pigs and marveling at exotic imported plants that had been coerced into blooming thanks to some obscure and probably highly unethical spell. The rest of the palace was subject to adornments similar in scale, with Chrom constantly receiving reports of such oddities as an escort of wyverns waiting in front of the entrance hall.

The expenditures were somewhat justified, of course, since the political gains reaped from the celebration were apparent from even a brief survey of the castle grounds. With the ceremony not scheduled to begin for some time, the guests were milling about the gardens enjoying the food and atmosphere. Chrom himself was sitting in a lounging area that had been set up, chafing slightly in his finery, but diplomatically he was far more active than usual. As the guests talked amongst themselves his court attendants drifted between a few key figures, conducting the more practical side of diplomatic affairs.

The guests in attendance including powerful Plegian vassals and merchants, and an occasion like this was the perfect opportunity to meet and discuss potential terms for new treaties and transactions. A few of them made their way into the palace itself to debate finer points or even sign a few agreements that had been worked out in advance. And for those in attendance who had no intention of working, today was still an opportunity for Chrom through even something as simple as the political clout that their attendance brought- he wanted few things in the world less than another war with the Plegians, and building more ties with the nation was a strong step away from that direction. He would have felt guilty about treating Robin's wedding in such a pragmatic way, were it not for the fact that he knew Tharja's family was doing the exact same thing.

Even as the thought crossed his mind a woman in dark mage's garb crossed paths with him, speaking cordially with a man Chrom identified as the head of some university in Plegia. He only caught snatches of their conversation, but the phrase "generous contribution" was audible enough for him to be sure that they were also getting as much influence out of this as they could. They of course were perfectly in the right to do so, seeing as that had been Chrom's plan from the beginning, but he still felt slightly uncomfortable about it. His conversation with Ortho the other day was still on the forefront of his mind, and even though he had only the slightest reason to suspect Petra he still knew he wouldn't be able to relax until the ceremony was done with. He had spoken to her once earlier today, just a cordial greeting the same as he gave all the guests, but even through a five-second handshake he had alarm bells going off in his head.

He was shaken from his despondency by a sudden tap on the shoulder. He turned around to see Frederick, wearing the same set of clothes he had been wearing at his wedding and looking just as unhappy to be wearing them.

"Milord, you asked me to let you know when we were about to begin the, er, 'pre-ceremony'," he said.

Chrom nodded. "I take it everything is okay at the palace?"

A ferocious gleam appeared in Frederick's eye. "Certainly. We're having the rite performed in one of the lounges which has been converted for the purpose. All potential entrances have had guards posted at them, and all windows have been sealed and had blinds placed across them. I have personally interviewed the three witnesses Ortho has selected and see no reason to doubt their motives, but as an extra precaution they have agreed to let me monitor the rite myself. Ortho has assured me that the process will take less than twenty minutes, ten for Tharja and ten for Robin, with the one not participating in the rite waiting in another room as per specifications. The rest of Tharja's family has been notified that they will be temporarily occupied, and so no interruptions are expected. Once the task is finished they will both be repositioned in the hall where they will await the hour of the regular ceremony." His voice slowly increased in pace as he spoke, and a satisfied smile crossed his lips when he finished.

Chrom of course knew all this already, having worked out these details with Frederick and Robin the night before, but he saw no reason to deprive the man of one of his greatest joys in life. Robin was getting the worse end of the deal anyway- while Chrom had spent all of his day relaxing in the fresh air, Robin had spent the first half of his wedding day listen to Frederick maneuver imaginary battalions through the matrimonial process. Among other burdens.

A few days before the wedding, Robin had finally sat Tharja down and explained the custom that a groom must not see a bride on their wedding day until the ceremony began. Tharja made clear that she was well aware of such a custom, and that seeing as obeying it would require him separating from her, she had decided as far as she was concerned it could go bite the big one. A brief argument ensued, eventually resulting in an effective if somewhat unorthodox compromise: neither of them were allowed to speak until the ceremony, and Robin had to wear a blindfold. Chrom personally thought this was missing the point, but felt it wise not to press the issue.

And besides being temporarily struck blind and dumb, he was being subjected to Ortho's company on top of that. It felt rather counterintuitive to Chrom that his primary duty now was to keep anybody from changing that. Nevertheless, any potential risk merited observation, and right now Petra was the biggest potential risk he knew of. He left Sumia in the company of Lissa and Maribelle, and wandered off to do some observing.

He found Petra by one of the fountains, talking to a woman Chrom didn't recognize and some Ylissean nobles who looked as if they were trying to determine the level of shock they could display at her wardrobe without rising to the level of rudeness. It was an internal struggle Chrom had seen quite a few times since Tharja had joined the Shepherds. Petra was either unaware of their dilemma or saw no need to remark upon it, since her side of the discussion seemed quite amenable.

She broke off in mid-sentence when she saw Chrom walking towards her. "Your majesty!" she said warmly. The nobles she was speaking to turned around and bowed hastily, leaving Chrom feeling as awkward as it always did. Petra, ignoring them, continued. "How good to see you again, your majesty. We didn't have much of a chance to speak earlier, but I must praise you, I couldn't have asked for a better celebration for my daughter's wedding."

"I couldn't very well deny my tactician and his bride all that they deserve, now could I?" Chrom said.

She smiled warmly. "I should certainly hope not, for their sake at least. Have a chat with us, I was just speaking with the count and countess, along with your compatriot Sully."

Chrom suddenly recognized the other woman who was hanging around Petra- it was, of course, Sully, who looked about as comfortable in a dress as she would being dragged behind a horse. Probably less. No wonder Chrom didn't recognize her.

Sully nodded and gave a short wave towards him. She was one of the only people who knew of Chrom's suspicions towards Petra, since he didn't want to spread suspicion to the point where it became a rumor that consumed the festivities. Luckily for Chrom she was perfectly happy tagging along with her to see if she did anything suspicious.

Obviously Chrom didn't expect her to storm into the castle in a maelstrom of fire and thunder. Aside from the various other reasons why that would be a bad idea, she had much more effective resources at her disposal. All the likely scenarios that Chrom could think of where Petra caused things to go horribly wrong involved her acting through an agent. Theoretically it could be anybody, but specifically who wasn't particularly important since the only people who had legitimate access to the chambers where the first ceremony was being held were those directly involved and a couple of guards hand-picked by Frederick, and Chrom was confident enough in his judgment that he felt no reason to be suspicious of them. That meant that anybody attempting to disrupt the ceremony would have to directly subvert the security somehow, perhaps in a scenario involving maelstroms, fire, or thunder.

There was no particular reason for Petra to directly contact such an agent right before the ceremony, and realistically it would have been quite daft for her to do so, which meant that directly monitoring her for that purpose was pointless. Short of taking Sully's advice and throwing her in the dungeon, Chrom knew that there was no way he could have kept her from acting in a subversive manner, but he still wanted to keep an eye on her during the process. Any additional layer of security he could build up made him feel more comfortable, even if it only had a slim chance of actually serving any useful purpose. He hoped that one day he could attend a wedding where he wasn't directly anticipating some sort of catastrophe, but that day wasn't today.

Apparently his inner machinations translated to a sort of dumbfounded look on his face, because he was snapped from his thoughts by Petra saying, "Your majesty, are you feeling quite alright?"

"Yes, quite alright. What were you saying?" he said, blinking to refocus his eyes.

"My father-in-law was just asking you a question," she said, gesturing towards Tharja's friendly-looking grandfather, who had apparently joined the conversation while Chrom wasn't paying attention. "I suppose the air must be getting to you- I must say that I don't enjoy weather this cool at midday either."

"I was asking who designed these gardens. They look absolutely lovely, I would love to get the name of the architect if I could," the elderly man said, his question as nonthreatening as his appearance.

"I'm afraid I can't help you. I think if I had to name every person who had redesigned part of the palace I would go insane," Chrom said. "You can probably find his name in one of the records rooms in the palace, though I think you'll have a bit of trouble hiring him since we haven't redesigned the gardens in at least a hundred years."

"No trouble at all," Tharja's grandfather said cheerfully. "Do you think I'll have any trouble getting up there and back before the ceremony starts?"

"You might, it won't be long until then. The bride and groom should start taking their common rites any moment now, and once that's done it'll be time for the ceremony," Chrom said.

Chrom took a moment to gauge everybody's reaction to what he just said. As expected, the faces of the count and the countess only registered blank incomprehension. Sully's wooden scowl remained unmoved. The two Plegians, however, both seemed mildly surprised.

After a moment, Tharja's grandfather said, "I hadn't known we were doing that. I assumed things were going well, Petra. Was there some issue with the dowry?"

"No, father. This is the first I've heard of it as well. Evidently the political intricacies of a marriage involving a friend to the crown can elude me," Petra said.

Chrom felt slightly foolish. Of course they would react this way, they hadn't actually announced that Robin and Tharja were taking the rites yet. That was the plan from the start; he had just forgotten because he assumed that Petra already knew and was working against them. Adding another layer of assumptions on top of all of those that already buried all of his suspicions against Petra only made him less sure of himself.

The conversation resumed its normal course, with Petra and the count carrying most of the dialogue. Chrom stayed out of the conversation, partly because he couldn't remember the count's actual name and partly because he was starting to doubt himself. He wasn't sure if he was being paranoid about his own paranoia, but he was less and less sure about treating Petra as an object of suspicion.

She had every right to be anxious about Robin entering the family. And if she was of a sufficiently self-centered mind, she could certainly disrupt his entry for any number of dubious reasons. But when he actually stood back, stopped obsessively focusing on one task at hand, and considered the available evidence, he came up short on reasons to actually suspect her. All he had was a list of potential motives, most could be assigned to practically half of his guest list- three-quarters if you were being cynical.

He pulled Sully aside quietly.

"Have you seen her do anything particularly suspicious so far?" he asked

Sully shrugged. "Not yet. All she's done is walk around and talk nice to half the guest list. Maybe 'I hope you have a wonderful time today' is actually code for 'The blood must flow at the first bell', but I don't give a damn about spy stuff, all I know is that nothing she's done has given me the creeps." That was consistent with the set of behavior Chrom had seen so far, at least. But it didn't prove anything one way or another.

"Well I'm glad you're at least keeping an eye on her. I'm sure you have things you'd rather be doing," Chrom said.

"Weddings aren't really my thing anyway. I'm glad you finally dropped by; that Ortho guy was here earlier and seemed to think it was pretty important that we both keep an eye on her," Sully said.

That sounded slightly odd, even for Ortho. He really seemed to distrust his sister-in-law, especially since the only actual threat she posed was based on hearsay from-

Chrom paused in his train of thought. He suddenly felt very foolish indeed.

"Sully, stay here and keep an eye on her," he said. "Don't bother watching too closely, though. I think I might be an idiot."

Without bothering to say his goodbyes, Chrom headed back towards the palace, his ears faintly buzzing.

He had learned that Petra might be a potential danger from Ortho. He had gone to Ortho for advice because Robin had learned that she was acting strange, from Ortho. He was focusing on Petra to keep her from interfering in a ceremony performed by Ortho. Which, come to think of it, was only being performed based on research conducted by Robin in books recommended to him by Ortho.

Petra did not seem like the suspicious one anymore.

It _might _still be a complete misunderstanding. Ortho could just be a harmless if forceful man trying to get as much prestige out of the situation as he could. But in light of how thoroughly he seemed to have worked to keep Chrom _away_ from such a critical ceremony, he wasn't sure that he wanted him in charge of it anymore. If he deliberately performed the ceremony incorrectly, that could incite legal quandaries that could keep Robin out of the family for months. Chrom didn't pretend to understand Plegian clan politics, but he knew a few months was more than enough time to enact any number of schemes. More so because Ortho had told him that himself.

Halfway back up to the palace's main building it occurred to Chrom that somebody who valued status as much as Ortho might not appreciate being forced from such a critical function, or even being forced to share it with somebody else. Somebody didn't spend time practicing every powerful fire spell on record and expect to never get any use out of them. He patted the sword hanging at his side to make sure it was there, and was grateful for the idiosyncrasies of military dress. He was even more glad that he had posted a guard around the chambers where the ceremony was being held.

Actual alarm didn't set in until he reached the hallway that connected to the room where the rite was supposed to be held. There were two doors leading into it, both of which were supposed to have a guard posted at them. Both of these doors now hung open, with no guard in sight. Immediately fearing the worst, Chrom put his hand on the hilt of his sword and slowly walked toward the entrance closest to him.

The scene he encountered through the door served only to confirm Chrom's worst fears. The few soldiers that Frederick had posted as guards were arranged at the edges of the room, short swords drawn with confused expressions on their faces. Frederick himself stood beside one of them, with his face showing nothing but suspicion and anger. In the back of the room were three men in Plegian garb who were presumably the appointed witnesses. In the center of the room, was Ortho, one hand on a tome and the other held directly on the neck of a semi-conscious Robin. And directly opposite them, holding a spellbook she had snatched from who knows where, was Tharja, her face as white as her dress and her eyes wide in fury.

"What's going on?" Chrom shouted as he drew his sword. He had a feeling he knew the answer and already wasn't happy about it.

Frederick, holding an ax, waved his free hand towards Tharja. "We were about midway through Robin's part of the ceremony when she burst through the door screaming."

"I, er, couldn't keep her in the next room, milord," one of the soldiers said. "She wanted to listen at the door, and I tried to say no, but-"

"Ah yes, I know my niece can be a tad unstable," Ortho said, his voice overpowering the man's nervous stammering. "Exalt, I realize that this must be quite embarrassing for all of us, but I hope you will not judge her-"

"Stow it," said Chrom. "Why are you holding my tactician by the throat?"

Ortho gave a small smile. "To keep him from hitting the floor, of course. You would hardly expect a Plegian ceremony to not involve magic after all, and I assure you that the effects will have worn off by-"

"_Liar!_" yelled Tharja. She turned towards Chrom. "I was listening. Frederick couldn't tell because he doesn't understand these things, and Robin only knows the basics, but that wasn't a marriage rite. It was a curse. Ortho was trying to put it on Robin while we just stood by and let him."

"What sort of curse?" Chrom asked.

Tharja looked at Frederick. "See those three men at the edge of the room? Go and slap one on the face," she said.

"What?" Frederick said.

"Just do it," Tharja said.

Ortho glared. "They'll just-"

"_You don't say anything!_" Tharja screamed. Ortho returned to silence.

Frederick, looking skeptical, walked up to one of the three men standing motionless in the back of the room. He raised a hand, held it there for a moment, and struck one directly across the face. The man he had hit simply took a step backwards to regain his balance, and gave no comment or exclamation.

"They're puppets," Tharja said. "Placed under an obedience curse. He probably just told them to stand there and do nothing, and when he told them to leave they'd have a memory of a perfectly normal common rites ceremony. He was trying to do the same thing to Robin, make him his pawn. The more powerful the curse, the longer and more detailed the casting process, remember? A ten-minute ceremony with the subject completely passive was the perfect opportunity."

She turned back towards Ortho. "I don't know how many people you've done this too before, and I don't know what you've been using them for, but _I am not going to let you do anything to Robin!_"

Ortho looked towards Chrom. "I assure you that this is untrue. My niece has just let the pressures of the day take her creative impulses a bit too far." He outstretched the hand holding the tome. "Am I not a man of my word?"

Chrom held his sword up. "No, I don't think you are," he said. "Guards-"

There was a sudden flash, and a blast of warm air. Chrom's vision turned purple for a few moments, and when it cleared Ortho was gone and small fires were burning all around the room. The soldier standing by the door on the opposite side of the room had been bowled over, his armor lightly singed, and Robin was lying on the floor, breathing shallowly with severe burns running up the side of his body.


	9. Chapter 9

Before he could even think about what he was doing, Chrom bolted out of the room after Ortho. The dark mage was apparently more fleet of foot than he looked, because by the time Chrom got into the hall he was already out of sight. Chrom cursed the size of the palace yet again, realizing that Ortho could have fled down at least three different passages, each of which branched off yet again at frequent points. There was no hope in trying to chase him down; he would just tire himself out blindly searching through the castle while Ortho made his escape. The only small comfort was that he hadn't gone directly outside. At least for now, he was still inside the palace.

He ran back into the room around Frederick, who had been close behind him. The disused living room had transformed into a scene out of nightmares. Small fires smoldered all around the room, and despite the efforts of the guards to stamp them out the room had filled with haze and the stench of burning fabric. At the center of the room Robin was lying on the floor, with Tharja hunched over him clutching his head, shuddering gently.

"Sire, we can still chase after him," Frederick said. "We've lived here all of our lives, we could be able to corner him."

Chrom shook his head. "No, don't play his game. He's still been here for months, and if he's been planning all this then he's certainly had time to memorize potential escape routes."

He pointed at one of the guards. "You! Sprint down to the gatehouse on the outer walls, tell them to close every gate, nobody gets out of the castle grounds no matter who they are. Don't stop for anything, don't leave there until the gate is sealed."

He pointed at another. "You! Head to the barracks, round up every man you can find, I don't care what they were already doing. Post guards around all of the entrances to the palace's main building, don't let anybody in or out unless they're with me or Frederick. Send some people up to guard Ortho's room too. Tell everybody you see that he's betrayed us, and to capture him on site. Shout it as you run if you think it'll help. I don't care if people get scared, we need to catch him."

The two men ran off. Chrom's head was faintly buzzing, and he almost didn't notice Fredrick tapping him on the shoulder.

"What if he gets to the gate before the messenger?" Frederick asked.

"I have enough faith in Ylisse's men to think they'll be intelligent enough to stop a man running at full sprint away from the royal palace," Chrom said. "If Ortho wants to get away then he has to act casual, which gives us a chance to outpace him."

"So we have a chance to hunt the cornered rat down?" said Frederick, hefting his ax again.

"Not yet," Chrom said. He glanced at Robin's prone form, and pointed to the remaining guard, who had just finished stamping out the last blaze. "Run up to the infirmary, or the Shepherd's storeroom, whichever you can get to fastest. Grab a couple of healing staves, bandages, and every bottle of salves you can carry- I don't know which kind are used for burns so we just have to hope we get lucky. When you get those head back here as fast as you can. Bring back the nurse if you go to the infirmary." The man nodded. "Go!" Chrom shouted.

As he left, Chrom looked at Frederick. "I need you to go back outside. Get Lissa and Maribelle back here as fast as you can. Carry them if you must." He paused for a moment. "If Sumia's with them, tell her I'm okay."

Frederick, not wasting words, ran at full tilt out of the room.

The room was quiet for a few seconds. Chrom tilted his head back and took a deep breath. He had to keep himself from panicking. If he panicked, he'd start making bigger mistakes, and if he made mistakes, then Ortho might be able to escape. The important thing was to keep calm, think clearly, and focus on making that flatworm in human clothes pay for what he did.

He heard a sniff behind him, and turned around. Tharja was still by Robin's side, holding his head up and rocking from side to side.

"I don't think you should move him," Chrom said, not wanting his injuries to get any worse.

Tharja looked up and revealed a face wet with tears. Chrom was mildly taken aback, and was suddenly feeling even worse.

"He'll be okay, right?" she asked, choking slightly. "They'll be back here any minute, right?"

"It'll be fine," he said, trying to keep his voice gentle. "You know Frederick, he'll be back with the healers before they have time to realize what's going on."

Tharja didn't say anything, and just nodded, looking back down at Robin.

A moment passed, and Chrom looked around the room. He realized that the three men Ortho had put under his control were still standing at the back of the room, their expressions still pleasantly neutral. They would have to be dealt with later. Chrom didn't know exactly what Ortho had done to place them under his control, but he was sure the process couldn't be easy to reverse. It was disconcerting, how they stood in one spot, totally rigid because their master had tightened their strings. All the more reason to find Ortho as quickly as possible.

He started pacing back and forth. The seconds seemed to stretch for years, and the minutes were almost unfathomable. The acrid smell of ashes hung in his throat no matter how hard he tried to block it out. Eventually the sound of a heavy thumping coming back up the corridor brought him some measure of relief.

Frederick burst back into the room with a leather satchel in one hand and Lissa slung over his shoulder. He set both down on the floor, and turned toward Chrom.

"We met the runner you sent up to the storeroom and took his supplies. I sent him on a second trip to the infirmary to see if he could find the nurse. I couldn't find Maribelle quickly enough, I'm sorry. I'll head back right now and try again."

Before Chrom could reply, Frederick had already made his way out of the room.

"Chrom, what's going on? One of the soldiers was running by yelling that Ortho killed Robin," Lissa said, her voice panicked.

"He's _not_ dead," Chrom said firmly, gripping her shoulder. "I need you to keep it that way. He's right there. Ortho put him in some sort of trance and hit him with fire spell, do everything you can to heal the wounds."

"Right," Lissa said, nodding and picking up the satchel. She hurried over to Robin, and hesitated slightly.

"Tharja, I'm going to need you to put him down. I can't help him if you're in the way," she said.

Tharja only replied with a nod, and put Robin's head down. Lissa started unpacking everything in the satchel. A few small healing rods, designed for portability, were the first to come out, followed by the bandages and a dozen jars of salve.

"You can help him, right?" Tharja asked quietly while Lissa was unpacking.

"Burns are hard. Most of the healing staves we have are just for knitting muscle, mending bone, that sort of thing. They can't instantly fix flesh that's been burnt away, same way they can't regrow an arm," Lissa said. Tharja's eyes widened slightly, and Lissa hurriedly continued. "_But_ I can use the staves to stop any serious bleeding, and the salves can soothe the pain on the lesser burns in the meantime. Once he's out of danger we can use magic to help him heal the worse sections, bit by bit. It'll take a while, but with any luck, he'll be fine."

"He'll be fine?" Tharja said.

"With any luck," Lissa repeated, examining Robin's side.

Tharja sighed. She sat back on the floor next to Robin, staring intently as Lissa started dressing his wounds. For a moments there wasn't any sound besides the ethereal hum of the healing rod. She fretfully dug into the carpet with her fingernails.

"This is my fault," she said after a while.

"You didn't do anything wrong," Chrom said. "If you hadn't been listening at the door Robin would be Ortho's sleeper agent right now and we would have no idea. Any fault lies with all of us. Nobody realized Ortho was trying to dupe us until it was too late."

"If he weren't marrying me, Ortho wouldn't even be here," Tharja said, resting her head on her hands.

That was a depressing thought. Chrom wasn't sure how he could respond to it; any sort of dismissal would seem like empty words. He stood still for a few moments, before a thought occurred to him.

"Listen," he said, crouching down. "My father started a war that killed countless scores of innocent people and brought our country to the brink of ruin. When he died the responsibility for all the suffering he caused passed directly to Emmeryn, and now it lies with me and Lissa."

"She didn't wallow in guilt, and neither can we. Sitting on the throne feeling sorry wouldn't have helped anyone. You have to focus on fixing the problem." Chrom paused to gauge if his words were having any effect. Tharja didn't move. After a moment, she spoke.

"So you're saying I should worry more about finding Ortho and making him suffer for what he did?"

Chrom hesitated slightly, and nodded. "Let's go outside. We can talk to your family, maybe one of them knows where he might decide to hide. We'll track him down eventually; he can't just vanish out of the palace. I promise you'll be the first to see Robin when we get him to a safer location."

Tharja remained motionless. The only sound in the air came from Lissa snipping off the end of a bandage.

Chrom sighed. "Look, if you-"

"I know where he is," Tharja said.

There was a pause. "What?" Chrom and Lissa both said simultaneously.

"I know where he is," she repeated, standing up suddenly. "The coward is going to disappear right under our noses if we don't stop him." Her voice was a complete monotone.

"What do you mean?" Chrom said.

"You only keep combat spells in the Shepherd's storeroom, don't you?" she asked.

"Yes?" Chrom said.

"I think so," Lissa said, sounding confused.

"But the library has all sorts of other spellbooks. Spells that aren't useful enough to practice with, or rare spells. Rare spells like teleport spells." Her voice was gradually rising in intensity, and she was starting to angrily pace back and forth.

Chrom's mouth gaped open for a moment as he processed this revelation. He stood up as well.

"Wait here. I'm going to go get some more people, we can stop him before-"

"_I am not going to wait!_" she shouted. "The gutless wretch is going to flee the first chance he gets, and the longer we wait the closer he gets to that spellbook. You told me to focus on fixing the problem. The problem is the stinking roach that calls himself my uncle." She grabbed her discarded spellbook off the ground, turned away and ran out the door into the hall.

"Stop!" Chrom shouted futilely, and followed her into the hall. The last he saw was her back disappearing down the hall, barreling forward without regard for her own safety as she screamed Ortho's name savagely.


	10. Chapter 10

Chrom's feet pounded on the wooden boards of the hallway. Even running as fast as he could pace himself, Tharja had still managed to escape from his sight almost immediately after he had begun his pursuit. Whatever adrenaline was fueling her body was propelling her through the corridors faster than Chrom had ever seen her move, or many other people for that matter.

He counted himself lucky that she had explained where she was going before sprinting off. Even if he couldn't keep up with her he could at least meet her at the library, and try to keep Ortho from escaping with the help of some obscure spellbook, or at the very least keep him from mauling Tharja too. Damn that woman, if she had had the patience to wait two minutes they could have gone after him with a dozen other people alongside them. Chrom knew the library- it hadn't been properly catalogued in a year, who knew how long it could take to find any single book in all the chaos?

Ortho probably knew, come to think of it. Gods knew he had probably checked before today. Chrom increased his pace.

The palace's library was one of the larger and more decorated rooms in the building, with each entrance set with two massive wooden doors covered in ornate carvings. As he approached Chrom noticed that the doors had been left open, which was probably a good thing. If Tharja had come upon them and found them locked, Chrom would almost certainly have found them blasted off of their hinges.

He slowed down at the open doorway. He could hear the sound of shouting within the library, made indistinct by obstruction from the countless number of bookshelves. Slowly drawing his sword again, he advanced slowly into the room. With any luck Ortho didn't know he was coming, and if he still had the advantage of surprise he didn't want to squander it.

Chrom worked his way through the maze of bookshelves as quickly and quietly as he could, following the voices as they grew louder. Eventually he came across Ortho and Tharja standing opposite of each other at the very edge of the room, neither of them casting spells yet but both looking quite prepared to do so. Tharja was farther down the aisle, while Ortho was closer to him, his back to Chrom as he held his tome aloft. Chrom got the feeling that the only thing keeping his spell casting in check was the fact that the book he was looking for was liable to burn in the aftermath.

They were still halfway across the room by the time Chrom saw them. Trying to make as little noise as possible, Chrom went back into the adjacent aisle and made his way up, hoping to stay unnoticed until he could make a clean run at Ortho. By now he could hear their argument quite clearly, and even caught enough glimpses through the books to get a good idea of what they were doing.

"I never went into this plan with the intention to harm him, my dear niece," he heard Ortho say. "I assure you that my intentions were never malicious in nature. The fact that he unfortunately had to be injured is quite the opposite of what I wanted."

"So you were carrying a tome of fire spells to our wedding by accident?" Tharja said, her voice cold.

"Merely a precaution, one that sadly proved necessary," Ortho said. He was slowly making his way across the row of books. "You must understand that it was always in our best interests."

There was a loud crack, and a few books fell off the shelf near Chrom. After a second he realized that Ortho must had leapt into the bookcase to avoid a spell.

"What did I tell you about lying to me again, Ortho?" Tharja said, her voice growing more obviously agitated.

"It is not a lie, and it never was a lie. I have never worked for my own interests alone, but for our whole family's," Ortho said, slightly shaken.

"Then explain to me how brainwashing my husband and using him as a human shield was for his own good," Tharja said.

"As I said, his injury was unintended, and it would be unfair to call it 'brainwashing'," Ortho said, resuming his creep along the bookshelves. "The hex would have merely allowed me to call upon his loyalties at their peak capacity. You would most assuredly never see any difference. Perhaps, once a year at most, I might make a request of him that he would perform to his utmost ability, one that he might have performed anyway were he sufficiently devoted to our family. An advisement to give to the Exalt, a new stratagem to take into consideration, a group of bandits disrupting trade that he might seek to eliminate. That is all."

"And why did you need to brainwash him to do this?" Tharja asked.

"Insurance, dear, it was merely insurance of what he probably would do anyway," Ortho replied. "You were there at the dinner where he was tested, you remember what sort of power he might wield. To allow the possibility that such an degree of power, in addition to the power he already wields, might go against our wishes would be a grave mistake. Used improperly, there would be nothing but sadness. Used properly, it would strengthen the goals of the family, and the bonds between the countries.

"With his mouth to the Exalt's ear, and mine to the ear of Plegia's new rulers, we would not face another war so destructive as the last in our lifetimes. Whatever capability the hex gave me, I would only use for our mutual good- never for selfish or negligent purposes."

There was another crack, and some books shuddered in front of Chrom again, this time only one bookcase ahead of him. He readied his sword and awaited his opportunity to leap out and strike. In the meantime, he was learning quite a bit from this discussion.

"You mean selfish or negligent purposes like making him stand witness to a fake wedding ceremony with his brain shut off?" said Tharja, her words lashing through the air like a whip.

"A sad but necessary-" Ortho began hesitantly, but was cut off.

"Do you even remember their names, Ortho? If that room had burned down they would have just stood there dumbly until the flames consumed them. And you expect me to believe that I could have given you that power over my husband and you would only use it to make him sign peace treaties?" Tharja said fiercely.

"I had faith in the Exalt to rescue his guests," Ortho retorted lamely.

"You don't have a faithful bone in your body," Tharja said.

"This is dark magic, dear. A tool, not an evil. You've cast your own curses in your own day, I know that for certain." Ortho said defensively.

"I've cast curses, some admittedly for petty reasons. I've even killed people in battle. But I've never been delusional enough to try and steal my family's ability to think for themselves and convince myself that it was right," Tharja said. "Who exactly defines 'the family's best interest', anyway? How many of our relatives actually know you're doing this? How many of them did you brainwash?"

"If the information got to too many people, the scandal would surely-"

"How many people know what you're doing?" Tharja repeated intently.

"Only myself. And now you," Ortho said. He stepped away from the shelf, and stood with his back directly to Chrom, his tome held against his robe with one arm, and the other arm stretched across his chest. Chrom's opportunity was here.

"So why do I get the feeling that what's 'best' for the family is usually what's best for you?" Tharja said. "I've heard enough. You're a monster, and you don't even have the decency to realize it. Now unless you want to burn that book you're looking for, drop that tome and come with me."

Chrom, deciding that he had heard all he wanted, crept back from the bookcase and directly behind Ortho. In one motion, he placed his sword against the side of his neck.

"Drop the tome. This will be easier for everyone if you just give up," he said, his voice held as flat as his sword.

Ortho made no motion at first. His body remained rigid, without so much as a turn of his head.

"Drop the tome, Ortho," said Chrom, more firmly.

Ortho slowly outstretched his hands from his body, holding them above his head. For the first time Chrom realized that the arm he had clutched across his chest was holding another book. Tharja's eyes widened similarly to his, as she realized that the arm against his side had been concealing a tome from her angle.

"Which one shall I drop, then?" he said modestly.

Chrom opened his mouth to speak, but instead, sensing danger, he dropped his sword from Ortho's neck and ducked to the side. A split second later a bolt of fire streaked directly through the space his head had just occupied.

An unpleasant smell filled the air as the carpet where it hit began to smolder. Ortho quickly took a few steps away from Chrom, withdrawing his hands to a more comfortable position.

"I am sorry that you could not be made to understand my reasoning, but I foresaw some time ago that I might be forced to flee," he said, flipping the other book open with one hand. "That's why I took the liberty of relocating this tome to a more convenient location in your library. I also hid one in my room, though I imagine that one is somewhat less accessible to me by this point. You would do well to return it to its proper place once I am gone."

Without warning he suddenly doubled over in pain. A purple flash was briefly visible behind his back. He lurched to the side, revealing Tharja, holding her spellbook with her face in the ominous expression that had recently become its default.

"And then there's you," said Ortho. Another spell shot his way from Tharja's direction. Chrom, meanwhile, had gotten to his feet and reclaimed his sword, and was now charging towards Ortho, with intent to seriously injure if not kill. With both projectile and prince bearing down on him, Ortho raised his other hand. For the blink of an eye he looked much taller and thinner than usual, and then he was gone, letting the spell sail harmlessly through empty space.

Out of the corner of his eye Chrom saw Tharja's tome flying through the air. Chrom turned to see that Ortho had reappeared directly in front of her, and had took advantage of her confusion to disarm her. She retreated a few steps backward, Ortho being the only one armed now.

"I cannot kill the Exalt, as the political ramifications would be too great. I imagine that I will not be welcome back in this building for quite some time," he said. "You, however, are the only direct witness to come from our family. If I remove you I remove the only witness who might besmirch my reputation in their eyes, and thus rob me of their protection. The situation will degrade to a one-sided accusation from the Exalt."

"I am sorry, Tharja," he said. Chrom broke into a run, but knew that he wouldn't be able to reach them in time. Tharja looked like she intended to run for a moment, but instead stopped, and simply stood with a small smile on her face.

A flash of yellow light blinded Chrom for a few seconds, causing him to stumble in mid-stride. He blinked to flush the spots from his eyes, and when he regained his vision he saw Ortho lying prostrate on the floor with a hole burned in his back, with Tharja holding the two books he had dropped.

"Do you suppose he survived that?" a voice called out.

"I'm not going to hope that he did," another responded savagely.

Chrom turned around, to see half a dozen people in the garb of Plegian dark mages walking towards them, Tharja's mother Petra leading the pack. A spell tome held open in her hand made clear that she had been the one to cast the lightning spell that had brought him down.

"Thank you," said Chrom, as two of them helped him back to his feet. "I don't know how you found us, but by the gods, thank you."

"Your sister was kind enough to redirect us towards where she thought you had run off to. I imagine she had mind to follow you herself were she not preoccupied with her work," Petra said. Her hair was disheveled and her face was covered in sweat; it was clear that she run most of the way to the library.

"You went to see Robin?" Chrom asked.

"Certainly. The whole party is nothing but uproar at this point. The general message has naturally become confused as it spread, but the consensus was clear that Ortho had attacked at least one of the bride and groom. Naturally we were curious to get the full story, and your knight generously allowed us entry while filling in some details," Petra said.

"We had hoped the part about Ortho being the one responsible was just nonsense, but sadly it seems not," said Tharja's grandfather, leaning over the mage's inert form. He sighed deeply. "Did you get any sense of why he did this, or did he just go berserk?"

"We stopped him from trying to cast some hex to control Robin's mind," Chrom said. "Apparently he's done this to quite a few people. Maybe even some others within your family."

"Mind control? The kind that would require a full ritual? I hadn't thought that he would go that far," one of the cousin's Chrom didn't recognize said.

"I suppose it's not really that surprising in hindsight. Remember that night when we evaluated Robin? He was practically salivating after he saw what he could do with dark magic," another said.

"I think we were all taken aback by that," said Petra. "But I didn't think that any of us would see him and think 'tool' instead of 'ally', or even 'threat'."

"Ortho did," Chrom said. He was suddenly feeling very tired, even though it was still the middle of the day.

"And then he got discovered, and so he tried to escape by attacking my daughter and her groom," Petra said. She walked over to where Ortho was lying, and kicked him sharply in the side. Tharja's grandfather restrained her, but Ortho emitted a weak groan. He attempted to raise himself on his arms, but collapsed back down after a second.

Petra sighed. "I suppose we'll have to get him a healer in his cell." She turned towards Chrom. "You _will_ be locking him in the dungeons. As deep as possible," she continued. "Your highness," she added briefly.

"Of course. No need to try and convince me on that," Chrom said, leaning against one of the bookcases.

There was a momentary silence. Chrom was glad for this, since it was the first moment in what felt like quite a long time where it didn't feel like doom was hovering overhead. Eventually, someone Chrom didn't recognize raised a question.

"What do we tell all of the guests?"

A more considerate silence broke out. Everybody save Ortho seemed to be pondering the question. Chrom felt the part of his mind that he had sectioned off for diplomatic matters going into overdrive.

"I don't think there's any disguising the fact that Robin was injured," he said. "Even if we cover everything else up people are going to be confused when there's no wedding today."

"And I think the news of Ortho's implication in the crime has spread far enough that people will have a problem accepting any other version of the events," Petra added. "Some of the more thick-headed Ylissean guests are already calling for blood. Naturally the Plegian guests are attempting to defend their national honor as best they can, and are saying Ortho deserves to have his side heard. Idiots."

Chrom groaned. A different sort of doom seemed to be moving into position overhead. A mad wizard loose in his palace was a problem with an easy solution, an international incident was not. He would rather have three Ortho's than deal with the aftermath from one.

"So we tell them Robin is injured, and Ortho is guilty of the crime. Leave out the part about the mind control hexing, that's going to be difficult enough to untangle anyway," Chrom said. He sighed, because the next logical step from that point was "And then deal with the riot."

Another silence fell, as apparently everybody else made the same connection. Eventually a response came from behind Petra.

"What if I drag him out?"

Chrom looked up, and realized that it had been Tharja who had said it, looking much calmer than she had before.

"How exactly do you think that will that help?" said Chrom, choosing his words carefully. Tharja had been through quite a lot today already.

"People like drama. People like stories, Ylisseans especially. It's easier to accept if a warlord is defeated by the son of someone he's killed, not an invading army. It's more memorable if the dragon is defeated by a hero-king, not a band of nameless soldiers."

"If I drag him out there and claim total responsibility, people get their story. A bride avenges her fallen husband on their wedding day. The Plegians can't get worked up because it was a Plegian who defeated him. The Ylisseans might still get worked up because it was a Plegian who hurt their Tactician, but if they raise too much of a stink the Plegians will just come back with the fact that a Plegian cleaned up the Ylissean mess. Ortho comes off as the villain, and all the softer-headed ones will be too wrapped up in moaning about how romantic it is to fuss about the details."

Chrom thought back to most of the nobles he had met and decided this was a fair assessment. The fact that most of them inherited their positions sometimes seemed unfortunate.

"Alright, you've sold me," Chrom said. "If only because I can't come up with any better ideas." He turned to the remaining members of Tharja's family, and there were murmurs of assent.

"It seems like the best option we have available," admitted Petra. "Though I would hate to go through that sort of stress after what you've already been through today."

"I'm not looking forward to it," Tharja said flatly.

Petra nodded, and looked down at Ortho. "Well, we might as well get to carrying him down. Somebody find a trolley so we don't have to haul his mass down all the way by hand." Somebody ran off.

Tharja sat down quietly. Chrom knelt beside her.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

Tharja remained silent for a few seconds, and then spoke.

"I wish I had hit him with a more painful spell," she said.


	11. Epilogue

The hallway leading to Robin's chambers had gotten a lot more familiar lately. Over the past few weeks Chrom had made a point of making a trip every day, even though early on there hadn't been much of a point. Nowadays things were going much better, though there was hardly any way they could have gotten any worse.

He knocked on the door, and heard a muffled voice from within granting him entry. The door, however, proved less welcoming, requiring him to shift his weight against it in order to force it open. Looking behind it, he saw the cause- a stack of heavy books placed on the floor, shelf space being at a premium. He reminded himself that he needed to send somebody up here to bring some of them back to the library; no one man could be reading so many books at once.

Stepping precariously around a few other stacks of books, he made his way from the entryway to the bedroom, where he found Robin, sitting up in bed over the covers and looking almost healthy. The only signs that anything was wrong were the shirt he was wearing, which split open at the side to allow easy access to his bandages, and his posture, which still caused him to favor one side by leaning on the other.

"Morning, Chrom. Got something new for me?" Robin said, looking up from a sheet of paper. He had insisted on returning to work the instant he could open his eyes and move his arms, insisting that they were all he needed to do his job. The rest of his body turned out to be more vital than he had anticipated, but Chrom had compromised by compiling every task Robin could perform from a horizontal position and walking it down to his room every day. The rest of the slack, mainly consisting of running through drills, could be picked up by Frederick, who wanted to do them anyway.

"Not right now. How are you feeling?" Chrom asked, already knowing the answer he would get.

"Great! I don't even notice the burns anymore," he said, sitting upwards, and swinging his legs sideways. A wince was visible on his face despite his words, and before he could put his feet on the floor a hand gripped his shoulder from behind.

"Don't you get enough of this when you put your books away?" Tharja said from behind him.

"You're getting up to put away books?" Chrom said to Robin, incredulous.

"He says that I put them in the wrong stacks," Tharja said sulkily.

"No, it's more that I want to start doing things myself," Robin said, a bit too quickly. "I'm not going to get any better lying here letting everybody do my work for me."

"That is more or less how it works, actually," said Chrom. His gaze drifted to a table in the corner that held a bag full of bandages and healing rods, to keep anybody from having to make constant trips to the infirmary for supplies.

Tharja pulled Robin back down despite his protests. After the incident at their attempted wedding she had achieved the seemingly impossible feat of becoming a bit more possessive, which wasn't helped by the fact that Robin was physically incapable of running away now. Gods only knew what happened in this room behind closed doors, but at least neither of them seemed unhappy about it.

"So what did you come here for?" Robin asked from a more inclined position.

"A couple of things," said Chrom, sitting in an available chair. "The Plegians sent a message about what they've done with Ortho."

"If the process didn't involve hot tar then my people have no idea of justice," Tharja said.

"So your family turned him in after all?" said Robin. "I figured this was the sort of thing they would have done their damndest to keep outsiders from having a word in."

"Well, they didn't have much of a chance of covering it up with how much attention his last stunt brought him," Chrom said. "But they were still trying to make dealing with him an entirely in-family thing. They probably would have succeeded if the Grimleal hadn't directly intervened and hauled him in front of a magistrate."

"That's weird. I didn't think the Grimleal would be too concerned about somebody trying to attack a Ylissean," Tharja said.

"The Grimleal have filled in most of the holes of the government now, so it's up to them to resolve these issues," Chrom said, shrugging. "You might be interested to hear that he wasn't actually charged with assault, since that's still in the hands of the non-religious part of the system. They dug up some old laws so that they could investigate him on charges of Apostasy and 'Defilement of Religious Rites for Malicious Purposes'."

Robin looked at him blankly for a few seconds before something about the second one clicked. "They know he tried to brainwash me?"

"It was a closed trial so I'm not sure. But, I do have it from a few good sources that the inquisitor who ordered his arrest was unusually eager to have him brought in. Apparently what Ortho did brought him right to the front page of the Grimleal's blacklist," Chrom said.

Robin nodded. "Well, at least that probably means they aren't trying to get another war with us."

"What was the sentence?" said Tharja, her mind drifting back towards what was in her view the only significant part of the conversation.

"Hasn't been given down yet," said Chrom. "Though my sources are fairly sure they're going to ship him off to some prison that was built out of an old silver mine. Again, just rumor, but it seems likely they're doing their best to make sure he never sees the light of day again. Figuratively and otherwise."

"He deserved worse," said Tharja.

"You're free to curse him on your own time," said Chrom.

"She didn't wait for your permission," said Robin. "Was there anything else?"

"Yes, actually," said Chrom. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper, which he handed to Robin.

"Another ballad cropped up about what happened at the wedding," Chrom said. "This one's titled 'The Bride's Fury'. Virion found somebody singing it in a tavern and got the lyrics."

"That makes, what, four of them?" Robin asked.

"Three. 'Betrayal at the Wedding' was just an old song with slightly changed lyrics," Chrom said. "I think this one is probably the best you're going to get. It even managed to get the part about the library right."

"Though it does go on for some length about the fairness of my hair," said Tharja, reading over Robin's shoulder.

"Anyway, that brings me to my last point," said Chrom.

"Which is?" asked Robin, ignoring Tharja's head jutting past his.

"As soon as you're well enough, you two need to get married as soon as possible," said Chrom. "For real this time."

Robin and Tharja blinked simultaneously. They looked at each other, and back at him.

"Weren't we trying to go about this as cautiously as possible a few weeks ago?" Robin asked.

"Circumstances have changed," said Chrom. "Tharja's family is no longer an issue, since they support the marriage. All the Plegians we could rope into coming to the first wedding are still riding off that wave of goodwill for now. That only leaves the Ylissean nobles to raise a stink, and as of right now they like you, at least until public opinion sours in a few weeks as it inevitably will."

"There's nothing to stop you guys getting married now. In fact, if we handle it right we come off even better, since we can play it as a symbol of international peace. The wedding itself doesn't have to be special, only how we treat the announcement. Make it a small, private ceremony; I don't think anyone would blame you after the last one."

"I suppose," Robin said, mildly confused. "If you're okay with that, anyway," he said, looking at Tharja, who shrugged.

"Good," Chrom said, rising from his seat. "As soon as you can walk well enough we'll send you down the aisle. I'll see you guys later." He started to walk out of the room, delayed by navigating the book stacks.

"Hold on," said Robin. Chrom turned around. "What?" he asked.

"We never got a chance to properly thank you," said Robin.

"For what?" Chrom asked, mildly confused. He wondered if Vaike had been making the servants bring people hams on his behalf again.

"For everything. We tell you we're getting married, and you work yourself half to death trying to salvage it," said Robin. "Either you did it because you're our friend, in which case you're a good friend, or you did it because it was the right move politically, in which case you're a good ruler. Either way I'm glad we had you around."

"I also appreciate your help," said Tharja, as close to humble as Chrom had ever heard her.

Chrom nodded vaguely, trying to take the compliment with good grace. After a moment he stopped.

"You really think I'm going to be a good ruler?" he said.

"A madman invaded the royal palace and attacked your close friend. Weeks later, with an army at your command and his home country a short march away, you're thinking of nothing but ways to promote peace between each other," Robin said. "I say this at risk to my own profession, but I think you're already a good ruler."

Chrom nodded again, this time more vigorously. He felt himself smile. "Thanks," he said, stepping out of the room.

Outside of Robin's quarters, Chrom slowly walked down the hall, going over the route back to his office in his head. There was still quite a lot to do today. He had a meeting to discuss the looming collection of taxes, which was going to take up most of his time. And of course he had to send a message to the Plegian government regarding the trial. If he had any time left after that it would probably be filled by whatever crisis was discovered as the day went on. There always was one, and the only thing to do was become more efficient about handling them.

Chrom wondered if good rulers ever had a chance to take a few days off.


End file.
